










REAL CHILDREN 

IN 

MANY LANDS 


A series of visits through the 
stereoscope y guided by 

M. S. EMERY 

Author of When We Were Little , 
How to Enjoy Pictures , etc. 



UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD 

New York and London 


U6RARY of CONGRESS 
two Copies deceived 



JUN 20 iy05 

Oopyrigni cutty 
CU.SS j AA6 no* 



COPYRIGHT, X905 

By UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD 
New York and Londom 
(entered at stationers’ hall) 

Stereographs copyrighted in the United States 
and foreign countries 

All rights reserved 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 



< c 

C ( 1 



CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Making Ready 5 

POSITIONS TO BE TAKEN 

England. — H. M. Edward VII, the Prince of Wales and little 
Prince Edward, in Buckingham Palace garden, 
London 9 

Ireland. — E rin’s little sons and daughters — country school, 

County Monaghan 18 

Holland. — B eside the Zuyder Zee — thrifty Dutch villagers on 

the fishermen's wharf at Volendam . . *29 

France. — L ittle Parisians out for a holiday in Monceau Park, 

Paris 44 

Spain. — W alls and towers of the Alhambra, on the majestic 

bank of the Douro river, Granada . . . .56 

Italy. — P easant children on the steps of the Temple of Vesta, 

Rome 68 

Austria. — A n Austrian hamlet, Val Ampezzo . . .76 

Switzerland. — S wiss hamlet near eternal snows — Saas Fee, the 

Fee Glacier and the Alphubel . . . .86 

Germany. — S toried “Castles of the Brothers," Bornhofen on 

the Rhine 98 

Denmark. — F un for boys and girls in their favorite playground, 

Ostre Anlaeg, Copenhagen 112 

Norway. — C hildren at play in a farmer’s field before terraoed 

Tvinde waterfall, near Vossevangen . . . 121 

Greenland. — T he world’s most unique inhabitants — Esquimaux 

and their “ toupiks ’’ (summer tents) . . . 132 

Russia. — M onument of Catherine II, and Alexander Theatre, 

St. Petersburg 148 

Turkey. — C hurning butter in a goat skin, Beeroth, Palestine . 160 

India. — C hildren are children the wide world round — little folks 

playing hop-scotch in Cashmere . . . .171 

Burma. — S chool boys and their priestly teacher having lessons 

out-of-doors — beside the Irrawaddy . . .180 

China. — M ission children, with one little American girl, Canton 196 

Japan. — S choolhouse and grounds with vine-covered shelter 

and little folks playing, Yokohama . . . 207 








MAKING READY 


It is a strange way in which we are going to 
see real children in other lands. 

Have you ever talked with a person through a 
telephone? When you did that, you could not 
see your friend at all; he was a long way off on 
another street, perhaps in another town. You 
were in one place; your friend was in another 
place; and yet you heard your friend’s own voice 
plainly. You felt that you had been close to- 
gether. 

The stereoscope that we are to use for our 
travel around the world does something as won- 
derful, in its own way, as the telephone. 

You really stay where you are, in America or 
England, or wherever you may be. The children 
of other lands stay in those lands. But when you 
put a stereograph in the rack and look through 
the lenses of the stereoscope, you see the children 
just as clearly and plainly as if they were close by. 
You can feel that you are beside them in a far- 
away land. 

When you use the telephone, you cannot see 
people but you can talk with them. When you 
use the stereoscope, you cannot talk with people 
but you can see them ! 

Would you like to know why it is that this par- 


6 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


ticular kind of photograph is so different from a 
common picture? 

The two prints that you find placed side by side 
on the cardboard mount look alike but they are 
not just alike. The glass “ negatives ” for them 
were taken at the same instant by two different 
lenses set side by side in a “stereoscopic” camera. 
A stereoscopic camera is one that acts like your 
two eyes, while an ordinary camera acts like one 
eye. 

Have you ever noticed that your two eyes do 
not see exactly alike? The right eye sees more 
of the right side of things that are near by. The 
left eye sees more of the left side of things. 

Just try an experiment for yourself. 

Hold your right arm straight out at full length, 
directly in front of you. Shut up your right eye 
and look with your left eye at the extended hand. 
You will see the edge of the hand and a part of 
the palm. 

Now keep the arm in exactly the same position, 
but close the left eye and look with the right. 
You will see not just what you saw before, but 
the edge of your hand and a part of the back of 
the hand. 

Keep the arm as before, and look with both 
eyes at once. You will see the edge of the hand 
and part of the palm and part of the back of the 
hand too. So, when you look with both eyes, you 
see part-way around things that are near you. 

When the photographer set up his stereoscopic 
camera before a group of children, the two lenses 


MAKING READY 


7 


side by side took in exactly what your two eyes 
would take in if you were standing there in place 
of the camera. 

Notice that the stereoscopic lenses themselves 
are not plain, flat glass; they are purposely set 
at an angle with the direction in which you face. 
The result is, that, when you look through the 
lenses at the stereograph, you see not two groups 
of children but one group ; and the children stand 
out real and solid, just as if you were near enough 
to speak to them. 

There are five things you should remember to 
do when you are going to travel with the help of 
the stereoscope. These are the five things: 

1. After you put a stereograph in the rack, try 
experiments, pushing the rack nearer your eyes 
or farther away from your eyes, until you find 
the spot where it should be to show everything^ 
clear and plain, just like life. Different people 
often need to place the rack differently because 
some are more near-sighted or far-sighted than 
others. 

2. Be sure to have a strong, steady light fall- 
ing on the face of the stereograph. Do not stand 
so that the face of the stereograph is in the 
shadow. The best plan of all is to sit or stand 
so that a strong light from a window or a lamp 
falls over one shoulder on the face of the stereo- 
graph. 

3. Hold the stereoscope with the hood close up 
to your face, the edge touching your forehead. 


8 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


4. Whenever this book asks you to hunt up a 
place on a map in your geography, be sure you 
do it. You will find it is good fun to discover the 
very spot where the Esquimau children are camp- 
ing, and where the Burmese boys go to school. 

5. Do not hurry. Take plenty of time to see 
each child and to read everything that is told here 
about the children in that particular land. Notice 
all the little things, and see what you can discover 
that your guide does not mention. 

The second time you visit a certain group of 
children, you will probably see a good many 
things that at first you did not notice at all. 

If you wish to see more of the countries where 
these children live, or of real, live children in still 
other countries, different from these, the pub- 
lishers of this guide-book can give you a chance 
to travel still more widely around the world. 

Now let us be off for our first visit through the 
stereoscope. 


AN ENGLISH BOY WHO WILL 
BE KING 


Do you know what is the largest city in the 
whole world? It is London. Find it on your 
map of England where it is set down on the river 
Thames. There are miles and miles of London 
wharves where ships come from every part of the 
earth. There are miles and miles of railroad yards 
Where trains come and go. There are miles and 
miles of huge factories and mills with smoking 
chimneys, where men and women, and children, 
too, work all day long. There are miles and miles 
of stores and of shops and streets crowded full of 
people going and coming and going and coming 
about their every-day affairs. And there are miles 
and miles and miles and miles and miles of streets 
full of homes where all the people live. Some 
homes are grand and beautiful, some are poor 
and miserable; some are neither very fine nor 
very poor, but just comfortable, happy places, 
where boys and girls do their work and study 
their lessons and have their fun in much the same 
way as children everywhere. 

The King and Queen of England live in Lon- 
don a part of the year; so does their grown-up 
son the Prince of Wales who will some day him- 
self be king. The Prince of Wales is married to 


IO 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


a lovely wife and has four children of his own — 
the King’s grandchildren. They are bright, ener- 
getic little folks and they live with their father and 
mother and their nurses and tutors and a host of 
faithful servants, in a fine palace in London, quite 
near the palace of their grandfather the King. 
All children like to go visit their grandparents; 
you like that yourself. Now you are to see two 
of these royal children in their grandfather’s large, 
grassy garden in London, watching a parade of 
soldiers from India. You will not see the royal 
palace, but you will see the trees and the wide, 
grassy lawn, where the soldiers are marching by, 
and you will find little Prince Edward and his 
sister Princess Victoria under a sort of tent or 
canopy watching the gay procession. 

Position in England . King Edward FIT, the 
Prince of Wales and little Prince Edward ; 
Buckingham Palace Garden , London 

This is a bit of real England. The ground un- 
der your feet is part of a London garden. These 
trees are reaching up into an English sky. 

It is an August day and the air is full of mist; 
that is why the outlines of those trees look dim 
in the distance. 

The big canopy is of velvet and the poles that 
hold it up are not wood nor iron, but silver; it 
was a present to King Edward from a rich noble- 
man over in India, the country from which these 
soldiers have come. You know, of course, that 
King Edward besides being King of Great Britain 


AN ENGLISH BOY WHO WILL BE KING 


II 


and Ireland, is also Emperor of India, away around 
at tlie other side of the world. 

Would you like to see a real, live King and 
Emperor? Look at the tall man with a gray beard 
and an officer’s uniform, standing at the front of 
the group under the canopy. As he is Emperor 
of India, these Indian soldiers are his soldiers, 
sworn to help him take care of their land, and he 
is now watching them march by, vastly proud of 
their fine appearance with those long, sharp steel 
lances and the gay-colored flags and guidons. 

Do you see another man just beyond the King? 
That is the King’s son, the Prince of Wales, the 
father of the children. 

The lady in the light-colored gown, standing 
nearest to us, is the children’s mother, the Princess 
of Wales. The children’s grandmother, good 
Queen Alexandra is there, too, standing just be- 
yond the Princess of Wales, but you cannot see 
her plainly. 

Look at the boy who stands by his mother, at 
this side of the King. That is Prince Edward, the 
oldest son of the Prince of Wales. He was born 
in 1894 — you may reckon his age for yourself. 
He is eagerly watching that gay parade, for he 
loves processions as well as you do. Very likely 
he is thinking how he will sometime be an army 
officer in uniform and ride at the head of his regi- 
ment. He can already ride a horse and bicycle, 
but he will have to do a deal of hard studying be- 
fore they will make him an officer in the army. 

An English prince cannot be a lazy boy; he must 


12 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


work and work hard to make himself fit for the 
honors people pay to a prince. This lad has les- 
sons to study just the same as you do. Of course 
he must know how to write good letters ; he must 
be correct in his arithmetical work. He must 
know the history of his own land and the history 
of other countries, too, else how could he ever be 
a wise ruler when the time comes? He must learn 
to speak other languages as well as English, for 
as he grows up he will probably travel around the 
world and people from other countries will cer- 
taily come to see him here and to talk over plans 
for managing affairs in different lands; he must 
be able to understand them and to say what he 
has to say in a correct and dignified way. That 
means a tremendous deal of study. Then, if he 
is to be an army officer, like his father and his 
grandfather, he must go through the most thor- 
ough military drill; he can never be a good com- 
mander until he has first learned to obey perfectly. 
He will have to practice over and over till he can 
learn to fence and shoot and to ride exactly as a 
prince should do all these things, and he must 
know, too, just how the private soldiers should 
do their work — then, when he is grown up and a 
regiment parades before him as this regiment is 
parading now before his grandfather, he will be 
able to tell whether they are doing things well or 
ill, and his royal approval will be worth having! 

No — it is not an easy thing to live the life of a 
prince, if one wishes to deserve the honest respect 
and love of the people. His Royal Highness, 


AN ENGLISH BOY WHO WILL BE KING 


13 


Prince Edward, is only a boy still, so he has 
plenty of time to earn his honors. There have 
been many strong, wise and good Kings in the 
family to which he belongs; his tutors will tell 
him who they were and what they did, and that 
will make him wish to be a good King when his 
turn comes. His duties will not be exactly the 
same as the duties of his great, great grandfather, 
for times change and customs change; but if he 
grows into a man with a clear head, a broad 
knowledge of history and geography, and a kind, 
unselfish desire for the good of England and of 
the world, he may sometime be one of the world’s 
great leaders. 

Prince Edward has two younger brothers at 
home, and they play all sorts of boyish games, 
just like the sons of any English gentleman. The 
royal lads are fond of ball and cricket and tennis, 
though the baby prince is not yet big enough to 
play a real game. When they go up into the 
Scottish highlands for a visit at the castle of the 
Emperor grandfather, they have a fine chance to 
play golf. 

Prince Edward has read a good many of the 
same stories that you know yourself. He knows 
Robinson Crusoe and Jack the Giant Killer as 
well as you do. 

All this time the Prince’s little sister has been 
standing there behind her royal mother, under 
the velvet canopy that came from India. Js she 
looking at the old man with the big cushiony tur- 
ban on his head? That man himself came from 


14 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


India; he is the representative of a very proud 
old family in his native land. His clothes are of 
beautiful, bright-colored and embroidered silk and 
velvet stuffs and he wears some magnificent jew- 
els set in the clasps and pins that fasten his cloth- 
ing and in his turban. He is a nobleman of great 
importance in India and comes here to-day as an 
invited guest of the King. When he is at home 
he lives in a palace of his own, with huge fans 
hung from the ceiling of the rooms. Servants 
pull fans back and forth by means of long 
cords, to keep breezes stirring, for India, as you 
know, is a country where the heat is worse than 
anything ever known in England. He owns not 
only saddle horses, but elephants, too; he has 
often gone riding in a carriage fastened to an 
elephant’s broad back. 

But is the Princess looking at him ? I thought 
so at first, but I believe, on the whole, that she is 
looking towards us. She appears to be a rather 
shy little maid, but she is not very old yet (she was 
born in 1897) and they do not take her out to see 
many such gatherings of strangers. 

The little Princess has lessons, too, with her 
governess and tutors, but she is three years 
younger than Prince Edward and naturally they 
do not expect quite so much hard work from her. 
She too will read all the beautiful and exciting 
stories of English history and will learn to speak 
French and German — very likely other languages, 
too; some of her nicest cousins are German boys 
and girls — she has relatives too in Denmark and 


AN ENGLISH BOY WHO WILL BE KING 1 5 

in Russia, as well as in England. Think how in- 
teresting it will be, when she is a little older, for 
her to visit some of the foreign cousins and see 
the palace-gardens of their fathers and grand- 
fathers. One little English Princess who had 
been here in this very garden grew up and mar- 
ried the Crown Prince of Germany; she was Em- 
press of Germany before she died. Very likely 
this demure little damsel in the white frock may 
have just as much splendor waiting for her; we 
shall see as the years go by what will be her 
fortune. 

But meanwhile the Princess is very much like 
other small girls and she enjoys her dolls and 
other playthings just as if no special magnificence 
were waiting for her. I wonder what she likes 
best to play? When her great-grandmother 
(Queen Victoria for whom she was named) was 
a little girl about her age, she went one day to 
visit one of her grand relatives and was asked 
what she would like to do to amuse herself. 

“ May I do exactly what I please ?” asked little 
Victoria. 

“ Yes,” said the duchess-aunt who was taking 
care of her. “ If it is possible, you shall do pre- 
cisely what you would rather do of all things in 
the world.” 

“ Then I will was'h windows. I have always 
longed to wash windows — I think it must be such 
fun.” 

The duchess was surprised, as you may well be- 
lieve; but there was no good reason why a princess 


1 6 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

should not wash windows if she would wash them 
well, so pails of water and soap and clean cloths 
were brought and the little maid scrubbed and 
polished to her heart’s content. I have no doubt 
those windows were thoroughly cleaned, too! 

There are a great many interesting stories 
about the other Princess Victoria — the one who 
afterwards became the ruler of all the great Brit- 
ish Empire. You can read them in a book written 
especially for young folks, called “ In the Days of 
Queen Victoria.” 

The soldiers that are marching by all this time 
are fine fellows, brave men who are afraid of noth- 
ing. Some of them have fought in the wars in 
India and wear medals given them by the British 
Government for their courage and faithfulness; 
some are young men who have never seen any 
actual fighting. The officers have learned to 
speak English but most of these men talk only 
Hindustani. If one of them were counting a 
dozen cartridges, this is the way he would do it: 
Ek , do , tin, char , pdnch , chhah , sat, dth , nau, das , 
igdrah , bdrah. 

Some of those men are Mohammedans and pray 
to one God, but do it always in the name of a 
special prophet or teacher named Mohammed, 
who lived in Arabia thirteen hundred years ago. 
Some are Brahmans and believe that there are 
many different gods. All of them went through 
a religious ceremony something like “ confirma- 
tion ” when they were young boys, and not many 
of them understand at all the religion in which 


AN ENGLISH BOY WHO WILL BE KING 1 7 

these English children are brought up. In other 
ways they could probably sympathize pretty well 
with the interest the little prince takes in their 
parade, for, when they were boys at home in In- 
dia, they loved nothing so much as a gay proces- 
sion with banners and music. Boys are alike in 
that respect, English or American or Indian, what- 
ever they may be, the wide world over. 


2 


“GREEN GROW THE RUSHES-O” 
A GAME IN IRELAND 

It is easy to find Ireland on a map. Everybody 
has heard of the country; a great many people 
have friends and neighbors who used to live in 
Ireland. Many American and English boys and 
girls have little cousins living in Ireland now. 

There are fine Irish towns like Dublin and Cork, 
with wide, paved streets and beautiful houses, and 
shops full of pretty things. In other parts of Ire- 
land there are great stone castles with parks all 
around them, tall trees and green lawns and gay 
flower-beds. And, besides these, there are a great 
many little country villages where people live in 
small cottages and have not much money to spend. 

If you were to ride through Ireland you would 
see a great many villages and scattered farm- 
houses; once in a while you would pass by a 
country school house and hear through the open 
door the sound of children’s voices reciting their 
lessons. Or, if you went by at just the right time, 
you might find games going on at recess. 

Look on your map of Ireland and see what it 
tells you about the distance from one place to 
another. A certain space on a printed map always 
means a certain distance you would have to walk 
or ride if you were on the actual ground. Some- 


A GAME IN IRELAND 


19 


times an inch of paper means ten miles; some- 
times it may mean a hundred miles or even more. 
See how your own map was planned. 

Find Dublin on its bay in the eastern coast of 
Ireland. Now we are going to look for our coun- 
try school in a little village about seventy-five 
miles northwest of Dublin. The village is named 
Ballydian; it is not important enough to be put 
down in your geography, but if you measure off 
on the printed paper a distance that means sev- 
enty-five miles, northwest from Dublin, that is 
near where Ballydian really stands. 


Position in Ireland. Erin's little sons and 
daughters at a country school in County 
Monaghan 

How many girls can you see? How many 
boys? Are there any boys in the ring? Are 
there any girls who are not playing? Look at 
the children’s faces and see how much they look 
like boys and girls that you have played with in 
your own school-yard. Do the girls in your school 
wear aprons like these? 

The game is “Green Grow the Rushes — O”; 
do you know it? The children began with only 
one child in the middle of the ring and the others 
danced round and round her, taking hold of hands 
and singing: 

“ Green grows the rushes — O! 

Green grows the rushes — O ! 


20 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


She who will my true-love be, 

Come and stand by the side of me.” 

Then the one in the centre chose another girl. 

In the city schools children are put in classes 
with those of their own age and size, but here at 
Ballydian the school is not large, so big and little 
girls sit in the same room. That tall girl at the 
left who looks so nice and neat often helps the 
teacher with the very smallest children, after her 
own lessons are learned. Do you notice that even 
now she holds the hand of the very littlest girl of 
all? It may be she is trying to be particularly 
friendly to the girl with the ragged dress; an older 
girl like her can do a great deal to help the others. 
No doubt she could teach the untidy child to mend 
her clothes and brush her hair neatly so that she 
would be much sweeter to see. 

The boys of this school are usually running 
races or wrestling or doing something of that sort 
at recess time, but to-day they are practicing some 
of their gymnastic exercises with dumb-bells and 
rods. Maybe they are getting ready for some 
special drill and exhibition, and need extra prac- 
tice. 

That is the teacher standing by the door. She 
has a great many lessons to hear every day. Some 
of the scholars are just beginning to learn to read 
and spell. Some have First Readers; see if you 
can pick out the boys and girls in the First Reader. 
Some are in the Second Reader. Some have not 
gone beyond addition and subtraction in the Arith- 


A GAME IN IRELAND 


21 


metic. Some are working very hard to learn the 
multiplication tables. What table do you suppose 
they think the hardest? The tall girl in the plaid 
waist and some of those boys can probably do 
quite hard problems in the higher arithmetic. 

All the older boys and girls study geography. 
Probably all of them have heard of America and 
know of people who have gone to live in America. 

Besides all these lessons the children study a 
catechism and learn stories about Christ and His 
Apostles. 

Isn’t it a wee small school-house? Inside there 
are wooden benches where the children sit to do 
their studying. Those little windows do not let 
in very much light. The walls are of stone, with 
plaster spread over them on the outside, and the 
floor is stone also. The roof is covered with thin 
slabs of slate-stone much like the slates on which 
they write their spelling lessons and do their arith- 
metic examples. 

Have you noticed the sign on the wall above 
the teacher’s head? It says Ballydian National 
School; a “ national ” school here in Ireland means 
a public school to which anybody may go. 

Sometimes these girls play other games — all 
sorts of old familiar games like tag and hop- 
scotch and I-spy or hide-and-seek. They like 
dolls, too, and sometimes they play keeping-house 
in nice shady places under those trees; but the 
teacher would hardly like to have dolls carried 
into school. 

The boys are fond of tops and marbles. They 


22 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


often play leap-frog and they are pretty good at 
simple ball-games, but they have not learned how 
to play a regular game of baseball. 

A good many of these children live near enough 
to the school-house so that they can run home at 
noon for their dinner of bread-and-milk or pota- 
toes or nice, sweet stir-about of corn meal. Stir- 
about is a good deal like what Americans call 
corn-mush or “hasty pudding.” Some of the 
Children bring a luncheon with them and eat it 
during the noon-hour, sitting on the grass here 
or up on that shady bank beside the school-house. 
If they stay here through the noon they have some 
time left to look for flowers or to search in the 
grass for four-leaved shamrocks. 

Do you know the shamrock? Every Irish child 
knows it well ; it is a little plant growing close to 
the ground like clover and it has green leaves 
that grow in three parts very much like clover 
leaves. Once in a while — once in a very great 
while — if you hunt and hunt and hunt, you may 
find a shamrock with four leaves instead of three, 
and that is considered very lucky. The boy or 
girl who does find one usually presses it carefully 
between the leaves of his arithmetic or his geog- 
raphy. A very good way to press a shamrock is 
to put it inside one of your school-books and then 
sit on the book while you are studying some other 
lesson. 

There are guessing games that children play 
here when they are staying through the noon. 
Sometimes they tell riddles. I am sure this big- 


A GAME IN IRELAND 


23 


ge st girl would know a great many riddles. One 
favorite is: — 

“ Londonderry 
Cork 
and 
Kerry, 

Spell that without a K.” 

Can you do it? 

The houses where these little folks live when 
they go home at night are one-story cottages not 
much bigger than this school-house. They too 
have walls of stone, but most of them have roofs 
covered with long bundles of straw tied down 
with rope, very close and tight, side by side, to 
keep out the rain. 

The house door at home is cut in two across 
the middle, so that the lower half and the upper 
half swing on separate sets of hinges. That is 
very convenient on many accounts. If you fasten 
the lower half of such a door and leave the upper 
half open it is just like having a big window to 
let in the air and the sunshine. Besides, almost 
everybody around here keeps a pig and a goat, 
and the animals are so sociable they would walk 
right into the house if an ordinary kind of door 
were left open. 

All these children have some work to do at 
home to help their mothers. Sometimes they 
sweep the stone floor. Sometimes they wash the 
dishes. Often they feed the chickens or go watch 
the pig or the goat while it feeds on grass beside 


24 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


the road. Those are mischievous creatures and 
cannot be trusted to eat the wayside grass with- 
out somebody to watch them. If they were left 
alone they would be sure to stray off and get lost, 
or else they would go into somebody’s field and 
eat the nice growing vegetables, and then there 
would be dreadful trouble with the angry neigh- 
bors! 

Goat’s milk is very nice with bread or with stir- 
about. 

These boys have also work to do. Some of 
them go with their fathers into the fields to hoe 
the potatoes and weed the turnips and cabbages. 
Everybody here has small fields and raises such 
vegetables. Some of the boys go with the grown- 
up men into the bogs to cut turf. 

Do you know what turf is? 

They sometimes call it “ peat.” It is a sort of 
spongy, earthy stuff, cut with long-handled spades 
out of the ground in damp places called bogs, and 
it is really the decayed remains of old trees and 
bushes and ferns and rushes and grass that used 
to grow in the bogs long ago. It looks almost 
like dirt, and it does have some dirt mixed with 
it; but, when brick-shaped pieces are cut out and 
dried well in the sun and wind, they can be burned 
like wood or coal. Everybody in this part of Ire- 
land burns turf at home, because wood and coal 
are very scarce and expensive. 

It is not burned in stoves. Most of these chil- 
dren have never seen a stove in all their lives. 
Their mothers at home have open fire-places and 


A GAME IN IRELAND 


2 5 


the lumps of peat are burned there in plain sight, 
making red coals which are very pretty to watch 
if you are sitting on a low stool beside the fire. 

The work these boys like best is harnessing a 
donkey to a two-wheeled cart and driving to the 
nearest market on a Saturday, with a load of cab- 
bages and potatoes and eggs or maybe some nice 
little pigs to sell. Any boy alive would enjoy 
driving a comical little long-eared donkey. Then 
there is the fun of meeting a great many other 
boys and seeing all sorts of people in town. The 
shops and the streets and the crowds of people 
buying and selling make market-day a great occa- 
sion — yes, indeed ! 

Sunday morning everybody goes to church, and 
Sunday afternoons there is a chance to visit cousins 
or go to walk with one’s best friend. These par- 
ticular little folks do not have any very nice clothes 
to wear; their fathers and mothers work hard to 
earn money enough to pay for the shoes worn out 
by growing boys and girls. But they are con- 
tented and happy and very fond of home. 

They all love to dance; there are no dancing 
schools in a country place like this but the big 
ones teach the little ones. Sometimes they are 
allowed to go to a neighbor’s house in the even- 
ing and look on while a fiddler plays and the 
grown-up people go through all sorts of pretty 
steps and funny jigs. They too mean to learn all 
the steps and be fine dancers themselves by and by. 

If one little girl dances more gracefully than 
the rest, people sometimes say “ it was the fairies 


26 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


that taught her.” A good many people about 
here believe in fairies. Hardly anybody ever really 
saw a wee fairy man in a green jacket or a fairy 
lady in a gown of silvery gauze, but some of the 
old folks declare there are such tiny folk who live 
in the forest and on the mountains. 

Did you ever read some verses written by an 
Irish poet about the fairies of Ireland? They 
begin : — 

“ Up the airy mountain, 

Down the rushy glen, 

We daren’t go a hunting 
For fear of little men ; 

Wee folk, good folk, 

Trooping all together, — 

Green jacket, red cap 
And white owl’s feather. 

“ Down along the rocky shore 
Some make their home. 

They live on crispy pancakes 
Of yellow tide foam. . . 

Then the verses go on to tell about how the fairies 
liked one little Irish girl so much that they stole 
her and carried her off to play with them. It is 
said that any child who ever did go and visit the 
fairies in that way is forever afterwards the most 
charming dancer you can possibly imagine. 

These children know all sorts of stories about 
fairies. Probably they know the stories are not 
really true, but it is fun to pretend they are true. 
When there is a wind blowing along the road here 
beside the school-house and the dust blows along 
the road, they say “ the fairies are going by.” 


A GAME IN IRELAND 


27 


Some people think that the fairies have tiny 
golden harps on which they play, making the most 
beautiful music. You never hear it in the day- 
time in a place like this, but if you were to go into 
the woods on a midsummer night and creep very 
quietly among the trees, and listen very carefully 
when the leaves stop rustling, you might perhaps 
be able to hear it. I never knew anybody who had 
really heard a fairy harp, but they say it makes 
the most beautiful sound you can possibly fancy — 
a little like the wind among tree branches, and a 
little like sleigh-bells away off in the distance, 
something like birds singing in an apple-tree, and 
a good deal like a brook tumbling over stones in 
a shady place Where ferns grow. Do you think 
you would know a fairy harp now, if you should 
hear one? 

These little girls believe that when the sun rises 
of an Easter morning it dances out there on the 
very edge of the world, because it is so happy. 
And some of them have been told that if a girl 
gets up before sunrise on May Day morning and 
runs out in the fields and washes her face in the 
dew, all the rest of the year she will look as pretty 
as a rose. The fact is that any girl who is neat 
and clean and has a sunshiny, sweet temper, is 
always one of the very nicest things in the whole, 
great world. 

Without much doubt some of those boys will 
live in America when they are grown up. Every 
year young men and young women, too, leave the 
farms about here and ride on a railroad train 


28 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


either to Londonderry, north of here, or to Cork, 
away down in southern Ireland, where ocean 
steamers call at the wharves to take them far 
over the sea. Some of the brightest and most 
hard-working boys and girls in American public 
schools went there from Ireland. Some of the 
bravest soldiers in the United States army to-day 
were once Irish lads in country schools, just like 
the boys you see here now with the dumb-bells. 

There is in a good many of our public libraries a 
delightful story about a large family of children in 
Ireland. It is called “ Castle Blair.” The brothers 
and sisters who lived at Castle Blair belonged to 
rich people, and lived in a very grand house, with 
servants to look after them, but they and the vil- 
lage children were the best of friends. The book 
tells all about the fun they had, and the dreadful, 
dreadful scrapes into which they fell, and the way 
in which the troubles were finally straightened 
out. Things did come out right in the end, for, 
though the children at Castle Blair were pretty 
bad at times, their badness was only because they 
were too young to understand some things that 
perplex older people too. But they were always 
unselfish and truthful and brave, and children of 
that kind are just the ones this old world needs 
to keep it going. 


IN HOLLAND, THE LAND OF 
WOODEN SHOES 


Everybody has heard of Holland or the Nether- 
lands. You have read about how the sea-waters 
are kept off the lowlands by strong walls called 
dikes; and how canals full of water run through 
the towns and across the fields; and how the peo- 
ple go about in shoes cut from blocks of wood. 

Look for a moment at a map of Europe and see 
how a great bay reaches in from the North Sea 
away up into the Netherlands, almost like a big 
lake. The Dutch people call it the South Sea to 
distinguish it from the great North Sea outside, 
only they use Dutch words and say “ Zuyder Zee.” 

All around the shores of the Zuyder Zee are 
villages where farmers and fishermen live. They 
are especially convenient places for fishermen's 
homes, because fishing boats can be steered in to 
the wharves and dikes and tied up over Sunday 
within sight of the owners' windows. 

Now you are going to stand on the top of a 
dike twelve or fifteen miles northeast of Amster- 
dam on the western shore of the Zuyder Zee. 
You will be in a little Dutch town called Volen- 
dam. You will see the great South Sea reaching 
far, far off in the distance, and you will find some 


30 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


of the Volendam young folks out on a wharf be- 
side the boats. 

Position in Holland, Beside the Zuyder Zee — 
Hutch villagers on the fishermen 9 s wharf in 
Volendam 

Here they are, both boys and girls. That big- 
gest boy sitting down near the right-hand end of 
the wharf is almost grown-up, but the others go 
to school, at least a part of every year. See how 
strong and well they all look. 

The boys’ jackets are red. Aren’t their big, 
baggy trousers funny? All the boys here in 
Volendam wear this kind and they think Ameri- 
can and English clothes are the ones that are 
funny. A few years ago a little American boy 
came to Holland with his artist father and mother, 
and he went to school with the Dutch boys so as 
to learn their language and be friends with them; 
but they laughed so much at his American clothes 
that his mother had to have a pair of big, baggy 
trousers made for him, just like the ones the 
Dutch boys wore; after that, he and the other 
children were the best of friends. 

The little girls’ dresses and long aprons are of 
plaid gingham. The big sister’s apron is of two 
kinds of stuff sewed together — gingham at the 
top, near the belt, and black woollen cloth down 
below, where it keeps her skirts from getting 
soiled. The girls are very proud of those pretty 
white muslin caps and wear them all the time, in 
the house as well as out-of-doors, taking them off 
only when they go to bed at night. 


IN THE LAND OF WOODEN SHOES 


31 


And there are wooden shoes, sure enough — 
eight pairs of them! See; even those smallest 
girls have their little feet shod in the same odd 
way. The shoes look big and loose on the chil- 
dren’s feet; they are meant to be loose so that 
the wearer may be able to drop them off quickly 
at the house door. People take them off when 
they go in doors and go about over the clean 
floors in their thick stockings. They are, of course, 
not soft like nice leather shoes, but thick woolen 
stockings prevent them from hurting the feet. If 
a little girl has to wear a pair that belonged to 
her older sister and that seem a bit too large, she 
stuffs a handful of hay in each shoe-toe and so 
keeps her own feet from slipping about uncom- 
fortably. Sometimes such shoes are painted, but 
oftener they are just plain, bare wood, and once 
a week, or about as often as that, careful mothers 
scrub and scour the shoes with soap and sand, so 
as to keep them neat and clean. 

Those cottage houses are where some of the 
Volendam people live. You do not see much of 
the town from where you stand now, but there 
are a good many more houses behind you and 
off at your right and left. About thirty-five hun- 
dred people live in the whole town. 

Dutch houses are almost always kept very nice 
and clean. These girls, even the very little ones, are 
taught to help make everything tidy. They know 
how to wash the dishes and to dust the benches 
and chairs and tables. That biggest girl probably 
knows how to do all sorts of cooking and clean- 


32 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


in g. She will be a fine housekeeper when she is 
old enough to have a house of her very own. 

The boats you see belong to Volendam men. 
They go sailing out from here across the great 
Zuyder Zee and even to the North Sea, so that 
the men may find plenty of cod and herring, and 
they come home loaded with all they can carry. 
They need to be very strong. Notice what heavy 
timbers were used in building them. Do you see 
how they are tied with ropes to keep them from 
bumping against each other or drifting away? 
This rope directly in front of us fastens a boat 
Which you do not see, off at your right. The 
swell of the water must be making it rock and 
pull away; just see how tight the rope is stretched 
from the heavy wooden pile in this dike on which 
you stand. 

Some of the boats have big fishing-nets hung 
up on the masts to dry. 

The mark painted on that big sail is somewhat 
like the license number on the wagon of an Ameri- 
can milkman. It looks like V. D. 138, but it is 
not quite plain. All the Volendam fishing boats 
are marked in that way with numbers. When the 
sails are taken down the boats look a good deal 
alike unless you are quite familiar with them. 

These older boys often sleep at night on one of 
the boats. It saves room in the little house at 
home and then one is all ready to start off on a 
fishing trip at sunrise. 

Just think how interesting it would be to lie 
down at night, in one of these boats, with a good, 


IN THE LAND OF WOODEN SHOES 33 

thick blanket or two as a cushion between you 
and the hard planks, and then look up at the 
twinkling stars until you fall asleep ! 

Yet it is not always so peaceful as that for the 
men who go out fishing — no, indeed. As you see 
it here, just now, the sea is as still and serene as 
the water in a gold-fish bowl ; but you should see 
it in a heavy storm ! At such times it is quite an- 
other matter. When a heavy gale is blowing, the 
sea is ploughed into high waves and deep fur- 
rows, and the water dashes up here on the paving 
stones in the side of the dike as if it were trying 
to tear holes and force its way over into the vil- 
lage streets and the gardens and fields. On a 
night like that you certainly would not care to 
sleep in a boat, pitching and tossing about, with 
first the bows up in the air and then the stern up 
in the air, and the mast all the time creaking and 
groaning. 

In stormy weather, the best place for everybody 
is in a snug little house on shore, with a bright 
fire and a good hot supper, and father telling 
stories about the storms he has seen years and 
years ago. 

In our own country you know that a part of the 
taxes which people pay are spent in building roads 
and bridges. Here in the “ Low Land,” or Neth- 
erland, money is used also to keep the dikes or 
sea-walls and canal-walls in good repair. In other 
countries the land next the sea-coast is higher 
than the water, so the sea could never overflow it. 
Here in Holland there are miles and miles and 


3 


34 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


miles of farm-lands which are actually lower than 
the surface of the ocean, and only the close-built 
dikes keep them from being overflowed and swal- 
lowed up by the sea which lies around them. 

There is a fine old story about a Dutch boy 
exactly like these boys here — a story which every- 
body in Holland knows; indeed it is in a good 
many American and English books. This is the 
story. 


One afternoon a boy was going on an errand 
along a lonely road that led over the back of a 
great dike or sea wall. Here in Holland a great 
many roads are built in that way, along the top 
of a dike. It was late, and the boy was trudging 
along as fast as he could, to do his errand and get 
home for supper. All at once, he heard down be- 
side the dike a sound like water trickling out of 
a jug. 

“What can it be?” he said to himself. And, 
being a boy who used his head, he stopped and 
listened. Then he went down close to the side of 
the dike where the fields began. 

It was water. The water was trickling in a 
very, very slender little stream through a tiny hole 
in the dike. It came from the sea on one side and 
it was coming out in a field on the other side. 

The boy thought hard for an instant. He knew 
very well that it would be a terrible thing if that 
little stream should wear the hole bigger and big- 
ger and finally tear the dike to pieces. Then the 
sea would pour in through the ruined dike, and 
the fields would be spoiled, and more than one 
pretty village would be overflowed, and the people 
would be drowned. No. It would not do to let 
that water run. It must be stopped, and stopped 
at once. 

So the boy knelt down by the dike and pressed 
some dirt into the little hole and held his hand 


IN THE LAND OF WOODEN SHOES 


35 


tight over the place so that the water should not 
run through. “ Somebody will soon come along 
the road,” he thought to himself, “ and then men 
can be called to mend the hole and save the coun- 
try from being drowned.” 

But nobody came. It grew later and later, and 
darker and darker. Still nobody came. He grew 
tired and stiff and cold, but he knew he must not 
leave his post. He called and shouted for help, 
but nobody heard him. 

“ I must stay. The water must be held back,” 
he said to himself. Night came on, dark and 
chilly. There was little chance that anybody else 
would pass along the road. 

It was a long, long night, black and cold and 
terrible. But, when morning did come at last, 
some farmers going by along the dike heard the 
boy call and went to see what was the matter. 
Then you may well believe they were astonished. 
One of them took the boy’s place and stopped the 
hole in the dike, while the others went hurrying 
to town for workmen to come and repair the 
broken place. If it had not been for that one boy’s 
faithfulness in sticking to his post, the whole coun- 
try-side would have been flooded and ruined. It 
was only his quick good sense and his brave en- 
durance that saved the land. 

The farms in this country raise plenty of vege- 
tables, and quantities of grass. Great herds of 
cows are pastured in some of the fields, and the 
people make large amounts of butter and cheese. 
In a place called Edam, only a mile and a half 
from this very spot where you are now, they make 
cheeses that are sold afterwards by grocers in 
England and America. 

There are public schools in this village where 
all the children go for their lessons. Holland has 
had public schools longer than any other country 


36 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


in the world. The children are in different classes 
according to their age, just as children are in the 
school where you go at home. 

Those wooden shoes would make altogether 
too much noise for a schoolroom. The boys and 
girls do not wear them indoors, but drop them at 
the school-house door and put them on again at 
recess and when school is over. 

The 'history lessons that these young folks learn 
in school are full of true stories about the splendid 
courage of the Dutch people in old times. In city 
schools they study the history of other countries, 
too, but naturally they give a good deal of time 
to the history of their own land and its great men. 
If you ever 'have a chance to read a book called 
“ Brave Little Holland,” be sure to do so, for it 
is one of the most interesting books you ever saw. 

Those smallest girls are probably just begin- 
ning to go to school. Most likely they are learning 
to read in Dutch primers. Perhaps they know 
how to count. The names for some numbers are 
so much like English you yourself could easily 
guess what the words mean. 


Een 

(one). 

Zeven 

(seven). 

Acht 

(eight). 

T waalf 

(twelve). 

Dertien 

(thirteen). 

Zeventien 

(seventeen) 

T wintig 

(twenty). 


The big sister will teach them a good many 
more things at home — how to sweep the floor and 


IN THE LAND OF WOODEN SHOES 37 

how to wipe the breakfast dishes and how to tell 
the time by the clock. 

Hoe laat is hctf (“What time is it?”) she will 
ask that little girl in the plaid waist; and the little 
maid will be so proud when she can say promptly, 
Kzmrtier voor seven (“ a quarter before seven ”), 
or Half acht (“ half eight,” that is 'half-past seven). 

The school problems in Dutch arithmetic speak 
of cents., but a Dutch cent is worth not quite half 
as much as a cent in the United States. Larger 
amounts of money are often reckoned in florins — 
a silver florin is worth about forty American cents 
— or in ryksdaalder ; — that is a silver coin of two 
and a half florins, worth nearly the same as an 
American dollar. 

These young people understand very well the 
value of money, and they like to earn it for them- 
selves. Very often they do have chances to earn 
extra pieces of silver by running on errands and 
by serving as models for the photographers and 
painters who visit Volendam, And most of them 
are prudent, too, in the care of their money; they 
do not spend it all at once, but save it for some 
special use, like buying presents at Christmas time. 

These Dutch children have geography lessons 
that teach them about all parts of the world just 
as your lessons do. It would be strange indeed 
if Dutch children should not know geography, for 
the Dutch people have always been fearless sail- 
ors, and their country has for a long, long time 
owned lands in far distant parts of the world. 
The East Indian islands of Java and Sumatra and 


38 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

Celebes, where our spices grow, belong to Hol- 
land, and so does a part of South America called 
‘‘ Dutch Guiana.” The people known as the Boers, 
in South Africa, are the descendants of Dutch 
folks who emigrated from the Netherlands many 
years ago. 

This particular town is not large nor rich, so 
of course the schools are not quite so fine as they 
would be in a great city. In Amsterdam, only 
about fifteen miles away, boys and girls who have 
learned all the easier lessons can go to a high 
school, and study French and German and Eng- 
lish. There are evening schools besides, for the 
young folks who have to work through the day 
in shops and factories, helping earn money for 
the family. A good many Dutch boys go to the 
great universities and become famous scholars. 
People here in Holland have always believed in 
giving children a good education and teaching 
them to do some sort of useful work. 

There is plenty of play-time, too, as you would 
find if you could stay here in Volendam for a few 
weeks. These boys know how to row and swim 
and play football. In the winter they have great 
fun skating. Indeed, all over Holland, the boys 
and girls and grown folks, too, go skating when 
the canals are frozen, and the boys learn all sorts 
of fancy steps to “ show off.” Sometimes they 
have ice-boats, too, that skim over the frozen 
waters like great white-winged birds. 

Do you know a delightful story-book called 
“Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates”? The 


IN THE LAND OF WOODEN SHOES 


39 


story is all about some children here in Holland. 
It was written in English by an American woman, 
and thousands and thousands of American chil- 
dren have read it. Besides, it has been translated 
into Dutch, and the boys and girls of Holland 
enjoy it, too. I should not wonder if one of these 
boys might have that very book at home now, on 
a shelf in his mother’s sitting-room. 

You would hardly think children could play tag 
in those clumsy wooden shoes, but they do; and 
they run fast without ever stumbling or dropping 
the shoes on the way. The girls even jump rope, 
and that must be still harder than running, when 
one has such funny big boxes on her feet. Of 
course when they play quietly with dolls, the shoes 
are not so much in the way. 

Easter is celebrated here in all the churches, 
and the children color eggs in all sorts of gay 
hues, boiling them first so that they can be han- 
dled safely. A favorite game is racing the colored 
eggs by rolling them down a bank or knocking 
them against each other to see which is the 
hardest. 

On May Day they have dances around a May- 
pole. 

Once a year there is a grand fair here — a Ker- 
mess , they call it; — that is one of the times when 
everybody who has gone away comes back home 
to share in the fun, just as in America people 
gather at their old home at Thanksgiving time. 
The young men and women who have gone away 
to work in Amsterdam or Rotterdam have vaca- 


40 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


tions so that they may come back. The younger 
married people, who have gone away to live in 
other towns, come home for a visit, bringing 
their babies to stay at their grandfather’s house. 
Then there are all sorts of shops and booths in 
the streets, where toys and cakes and candies can 
be bought; there are shows and dances; it is the 
greatest fun these boys and girls could ask for. 

The nice, clean houses are scrubbed even cleaner 
than ever. The people put on their best clothes, 
and they set their dinner tables with the nicest 
blue-and-white dishes. Would you like to know 
what kind of things they have for dinner? See 
if you can understand when you are told the 
Dutch names for some of the things they eat at 
home : — 

ham vis ch hrood 

boter koffy thee 

A boy eats neatly with a vork and drinks water 
or milk from a glas. 

Just see how many Dutch words you know al- 
ready! It would not take long to learn the lan- 
guage so that you could talk with these children 
and understand them perfectly. 

If you have studied United States history you 
will remember that the famous men whom we call 
the “ Pilgrim Fathers ” sailed to America from a 
town here in Holland. They were really English 
people, but they had left England and had been 
living for some time in Holland, before they made 


IN THE LAND OF WOODEN SHOES 


41 


their famous voyage in 1620 in the good ship 
Mayflower. Some of the Pilgrims who helped 
form the American colony at Plymouth, Massa- 
chusetts, had learned these same Dutch words 
from Holland neighbors. 

There are many holidays here, scattered all 
through the year. People remember each other’s 
birthdays with flowers and presents and friendly 
messages. And S’t. Nicholas Day always brings 
special fun of its own. 

St. Nicholas is the same as our Santa Claus, and 
on the sixth of December he goes riding over 
those house roofs, indeed all through Holland, 
with a sledge loaded with presents. When these 
little girls go to bed, the night before St. Nicholas 
day, they leave their wooden shoes, all nice and 
clean, before the fireplace, so that the good Saint 
may fill them with gifts. Very often they leave 
some fresh, sweet hay in the shoes; that is to feed 
the Saint’s horse while he hurries about doing the 
yearly errands. None of these children ever actu- 
ally saw the horse; he comes only in the dead of 
night when people are sound asleep — but every 
time, without fail, the hay is gone the next morn- 
ing, so something must have taken it. What do 
you think? 

It is said that children who have not behaved 
well get no presents from St. Nicholas, but only 
a stick with which they may be whipped. How- 
ever, T never knew of a child who really did find 
only a stick in his shoe. Perhaps all Dutch chil- 
dren are good nowadays. Perhaps the Saint is 


42 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


good-natured and gives them a chance to try 
again. 

There are all sorts of special goodies when St. 
Nicholas comes. Dutch mothers do cook poffert- 
jes at other times of the year, but they taste best 
on a holiday. They are something like very light, 
puffy griddle-cakes, eaten with butter and sugar. 
Dutch doughnuts are nice, too, especially if it is a 
cold day and you have been out on the ice trying 
a new pair of skates. As for Dutch cookies, they 
just melt in your mouth. 

When a new baby comes to a Volendam family, 
the friends who call to see it are treated to muisjes. 
Those are little flat cakes frosted over the top. 
If the baby is a girl, the cakes have smooth frost- 
ing; if it is a boy, the frosting is rough — that is 
the custom. 

About three hundred years ago a baby boy was 
born in Holland and named Claes Martenzoon 
Van Rosevelt. When he was older he went to 
live in America, and he married a wife and had 
boys of his own. Then those boys grew up and 
were fathers in their turn, and so it went on until 
a great, great, many-times-great grandson of Claes 
was born in the city of New York and named 
Theodore. And everybody knows how Theodore 
Roosevelt became a soldier in Porto Rico, the gal- 
lant colonel of the “ Rough Riders,’’ and after- 
wards Governor of the State of New York and 
then President of the whole United States of 
America. 

These young folks whose people live still in 


IN THE LAND OF WOODEN SHOES 


43 


Holland are always glad when the New Year 
comes in, for there is much visiting, and sending 
friendly messages to all the family relatives and 
the kindly, good-hearted neighbors. 

This is one of the pretty Dutch ways of wishing 
a friend all happiness: — 

“ I wish you a Happy New Year! 

Long may you live ! 

Much may you give ! 

Happy may you die ! 

And Heaven be yours 
By and by ! ” 


A ROMP IN ONE OF THE PARIS 
PARKS 


All American boys and girls know the flag of 
the United States. A great many know a song 
about the “ Red, White and Blue ” — our national 
colors. 

But do you know that another country besides 
America has these three 
colors in its flag? They 
are arranged not like 
ours, but in three plain 
stripes — this way. It is 
the flag of France. 

Of course you know where France is. Every- 
body knows that. If you will look at your map of 
Europe, you can find marked upon it the very 
place where we are going to see some French 
children having the gayest sort of a frolic. 

Look for the river Seine in the northern part 
of the country, and find the city of Paris on the 
Seine. 

Paris is one of the largest and most beautiful 
cities in the whole world. Everybody has heard 
of it; Americans and English people who travel 
at all outside their own lands are sure to go there 
to see the gay streets and visit the fine shops, to 
enjoy the plays and operas and concerts, and to 


u 

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A ROMP IN A PARIS PARK 


45 


look at the pictures that fill long galleries in the 
art museums. People who live all the time in 
Paris feel sure it is the most delightful city in the 
world; — that may be partly because it is their 
home. We all have an idea that home is best. 

There are a number of fine large parks in Paris, 
where people go to walk and to hear band con- 
certs, and where children may play whenever they 
please. We are going to visit the Monceau Park, 
and we shall find a troop of happy children there 
before us. 

Position in France . Little Parisians out for a 
holiday in Monceau Park, Paris 

Isn’t it fun just to see them run and play! 

How different their clothes are from the clothes 
of the children we saw in Holland ! 

I hope that girl with the sunshiny face will be 
able to keep her shuttlecock up in the air for a 
long, long time, without once dropping it. Have 
you ever played that game ? The shuttlecock is a 
tiny bit of cork or very light wood, stuck with 
feathers to make it as light as a bird. The girl 
is trying to see how long she can keep it up in the 
air by striking from below with that battledore in 
her hand. Some children strike it up twenty times 
without missing, and that is not easy, for when 
the wind takes the shuttlecock it goes flying off to 
one side like a live thing and you have to run like 
lightning if you are to strike it up again and not 
let it fall to the ground. The one belonging to 
that little girl is whirling so fast at this moment 


46 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


you could hardly tell what it is, but the boy is 
holding his still for just an instant, and you can 
see quite plainly the feathers with which it is made. 

Perhaps the boy’s shuttlecock had fallen to the 
ground so that he is having to begin all over 
again. Maybe, though, he has just come from 
home to join in the fun, and can play quite as 
well as his pretty sister. 

Do you see what that other boy with the cloth 
cap holds in his hands? A jump-rope! He calls 
it a corde h sauter. Somebody else has been jump- 
ing, too — look hard and you will find another rope 
with wooden handles thrown on the ground close 
by where we stand. I am sure there is some very 
little boy or girl near by. Look at the other play- 
things on the ground and you will see that some- 
body has been digging and making sand pies. 

Do you see where a number of girl friends are 
playing tag around the electric-light pole? Some 
of them are running so fast you cannot see their 
feet quite plainly as you see the feet of the boy 
with the rope. I wonder if they will get dizzy 
running around that pole! Probably they are 
chasing each other there partly because it is fun 
to dodge around a post and partly because the 
paths seem to be almost filled with nurses and 
babies. Of course nobody wants to run against 
a nice pink-and-white baby and spill him out of 
his carriage and make him cry. 

These children all have pretty manners. They 
are very carefully taught by their mothers and 
their nurses, and they always say Pardon , Monsieur 


A ROMP IN A PARIS PARK 


47 


(“ I beg your pardon, sir ”), or Excuses moi , Ma- 
dame (“ Excuse me, madame ”), if they do run 
against anybody by accident. If it is a strange lit- 
tle girl to whom they speak — a little girl whose 
name they do not know — they politely call her 
Mademoiselle, just as they would if she were a 
grown up young lady. 

I wonder if it is the wolf-game that those girls 
are playing. That is very popular here. The 
child who is the wolf stands off at one side and 
the others march around, singing French words 
that mean 


“ Let’s go walking in the woods 
When the wolf is not about.” 



Prowenons nous datu le bois 



&e.n 


dant cjue 1 


lou 


? ri% \ 


e.st 






Then they stop, and one of the children calls : — 
Loup , views tu? (“ Wolf, are you coming?”) 
The wolf replies: — 

Non, je me tive. (“ No, I am just getting up.”) 


4 8 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


Then they all sing and march as before. An- 
other child calls again : — 

Loup , viens tu ? (“Wolf, are you coming ? ”) 
The wolf replies : — 

Non, je m’habille. (“ No, I am dressing.”) 

Then they sing again about the walk in the 
woods. They ask several times if the wolf is com- 
ing and he says he is eating breakfast or he is 
reading the newspaper, or something like that. 
At last he cries : — 

Je viens — (“ I am coming ! ”) 

And at the word they all scatter, and run as fast 
as their legs can carry them. The one caught has 
to be Wolf next time. 

The park here is a favorite playground for chil- 
dren living in this part of the city. There are sev- 
eral nice open spaces like this; there are smooth 
green grass-plots; there are a great many gay 
flower-beds like that one beyond the lamp-post; 
and winding paths lead around among the shady 
trees. In several places there are white marble 
statues. The one you see straight ahead repre- 
sents a famous Frenchman who used to live here 
in Paris and who wrote stories for grown up 
people. 

There are other parks not far away, with all 
sorts of fun going on. Swings and merry-go- 
rounds are very popular, and Punch-and-Judy 
shows keep everybody laughing over the comical 
antics of the queer, moving dolls. There is almost 
always a circus in town, where trained animals 
perform, and women dressed like fairies ride bare- 


A ROMP IN A PARIS PARK 


49 


backed horses, and men hang by their toes from 
swings high up in the air, or do wonderful magic 
tricks very hard to understand. Something excit- 
ing and gay is always to be seen. Indeed it is 
very good fun just to walk along one of the sunny 
streets near this park on a bright afternoon, and 
see the carriages, with most beautiful ladies sitting 
in them, and horses, with glossy coats and silver- 
mounted harnesses, tossing their heads and pranc- 
ing as they go by. 

The grown up women whom you see here now 
are the nurses and governesses of the children. 
There are good schools in Paris, but a great many 
fathers and mothers like to have their little folks 
taught at home, so many teachers either live with 
a family or come to the house every day for les- 
sons. All these children except the babies can 
read and write. Their teachers take great pains 
with their spelling and their pronunciation, for they 
say the French language is so beautiful that it is 
a shame to speak it badly or write it incorrectly. 
The children have exercise books in which they 
copy their spelling lessons and their arithmetic 
problems, and a neat book all full of correct exer- 
cises is something of which they are very proud. 

They learn a great many interesting stories 
about French history by hearing the stories read 
aloud slowly by the governess, and writing down 
each sentence in an exercise book just as it is, 
read. French history is full of splendid stories, 
too ! 

France to-day is a republic with a President at 

4 


50 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

the head, but years ago it was a monarchy and a 
king ruled the people. In old times this park 
where you are now was not a public garden at all, 
but was part of the estate of a rich and powerful 
French nobleman known as the Duke of Orleans. 
He had a magnificent palace not far away, quite 
fine enough for any king, and his children used to 
play out here in these very grounds where you are 
now, among the trees. 

And, later, one of those very children became 
a king of France. He was called Louis Philippe. 
I suppose even when he was a king he used to 
remember sometimes the frolics he used to have 
here. 

After the time of Louis Philippe, the forest and 
gardens here belonged first to one person and 
then to another; finally they belonged to the city 
of Paris; and now, for years and years, everybody 
has had a right to come here and enjoy the fresh 
air and the sunshine. 

It happens that all these children whom you see 
here just now live in particularly pretty houses, on 
nice, clean streets, and have everything they could 
possibly wish to make them comfortable and 
happy. Of course there are a great many other 
French children whose people are not rich, and 
who cannot give them many pretty clothes or fine 
playthings; but one does not have to be rich in 
order to enjoy life. French country children have 
great fun, too. If you want to read about a 
French boy and girl in the country you should 
find a story called “ Hector,” written by Flora 


A ROMP IN A PARIS PARK 5 1 

Shaw. You will think it one of the nicest stories 
you ever read. 

These little Parisian girls all have beautiful 
dolls; the toy-shops of Paris are famous for dolls 
— lovely creatures with golden hair or dark, curls 
or braids, blue eyes or brown eyes, just as a little 
mamma prefers. 

And every possible kind of thing can be bought 
for a doll’s use — not only beds and chairs and 
bureaus, but tiny gloves and parasols, wee writ- 
ing desks with paper and envelopes an inch long; 
jewelled combs and fans and hairpins; tiny purses 
and shopping-bags — you can hardly think of a 
thing which might not be bought for a Paris doll 
if one’s father has plenty of money to spend. 
Sometimes little girls bring their favorites out 
here in this park and wheel them through shady 
paths in doll-carriages. 

Of course boys never care much for dolls after 
they are big enough to run about. These boys 
that you see with the rope and the shuttlecock 
are good at spinning tops and playing marbles 
and they are fond of lively games like “ I-spy.” 
Brothers and sisters both play “ Hide-and-seek,” 
only they call it cache-cache. They like Colin Mail- 
lard, too, just as much as you like it yourself. Yes 
— you do play that game, only you call it “ Blind- 
man’s-buff.” 

There is a particularly pretty game which these 
children play just as their fathers and mothers 
played it; even their grandfathers and grand- 
mothers used to play it long ago. 


52 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

A number of boys and girls take hold of hands 
and skip around in a circle singing: — 



Sut le jxyrit cf Aui 




cm-i 


ianse^ 


( 


id 

r 




' "1 

M 

t= 


m m 

1 o 

c 

— c 

— € — 

J J 

' d 

1 

H 



5ur le pant A Avignon taut Wtnonl* 


Tint 


-fr 






jLsU a- 

Q. 


-e— 

-<5l 

• 


danse en rcmAe^Les LeaujcintssieuY^ont COmme. £a. 


LesWUes dames-* — 


“ On the bridge at Avignon 
Everyone goes dancing, dancing ; 
On the bridge at Avignon 
Everybody dances. 

Elegant gentlemen — do — like — this ! 
Lovely ladies — do — like — that ! 

On the bridge at Avignon 
Everybody dances.” 


When they come to the part where the song 
speaks of the “elegant gentlemen,” every boy 


A ROMP IN A PARIS PARK 


53 


makes a bow, a very deep bow, as nice as he can 
make. When the “ lovely ladies ” are mentioned, 
each girl makes a courtesy — the prettiest one she 
knows. Then they all join hands again and dance 
around as before. 

When it rains and these children have to stay 
in the house all day, they have quantities of inter- 
esting books to read. All the nicest of our fairy 
stories have been written in French, or translated 
into French. These little playmates know all 
about Cinderella and Puss-in-boots, and Aladdin 
and his wonderful lamp. They have read about 
Robinson Crusoe, and most of them know another 
fine story called “The Swiss Family Robinson”; 
that tells about how a whole family were ship- 
wrecked on a tropical island and how they built 
a house up in a tree and tamed the wild animals, 
and discovered all sorts of curious and delicious 
things to eat. The story is printed in English as 
well as in French; very likely you have read it 
yourself. 

One of the books which French children are 
quite likely to have for a Christmas present is the 
story of a French country girl named Joan of Arc, 
and how she led a whole army of French soldiers 
to victory and saved the king of France from his 
enemies. If you do not know about Joan of Arc, 
you should certainly find her story in some French 
history or an encyclopaedia. These boys and girls 
expect everybody to know about Joan of Arc, just 
as you expect everybody to know about George 
Washington and the Declaration of Independence. 


54 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

Some of our American story-books have even 
been translated into French, so that the little Pari- 
sians may enjoy them, too. If you have ever read 
“ Little Women ” and “ The Story of a Bad Boy,” 
you can imagine what a good time French boys 
and girls must have reading the same funny chap- 
ters. Very likely they say to their mothers, “How 
strange it is, to think that American children have 
lessons and games like ours, away over at the 
other side of the ocean ! ” 

Birthdays always bring some specially pleasant 
happenings for fortunate boys and girls like these. 
Indeed almost every family, rich or poor, tries to 
make a child’s birthday happy with some small 
celebration. There may be presents, there may 
be a family picnic in one of the parks, there may 
be only a hug and a kiss — something marks the 
day and reminds people that they are very dear 
to one another. 

Easter and Christmas are always beautiful holi- 
days, with special music in all the churches. Some 
French families have Christmas trees, but pres- 
ents are oftener given at the New Year. These 
little girls work very hard at their sewing and em- 
broidery in order to make pretty things for father 
and mother and the other children; all sorts of 
secrets are in the air and mysterious bundles are 
hidden away in deep bureau drawers out of sight, 
until the time comes to tie them up with ribbons 
and tissue paper and mark them with people’s 
names. 

One of the greatest days of all in the life of these 




A ROMP IN A PARIS PARK 


55 


French boys and girls will be the time when they 
first go to communion in their church. They will 
have studied their catechism and learned it well. 
They will have made new resolutions to be good 
— never to be cross again, never to be lazy nor 
disobedient, never to do a single thing that is sel- 
fish and mean and wicked. And then they will all 
be dressed in fresh new clothes, as sweet and clean 
as their new resolutions, the girls all in pure white. 
At the church they will say a prayer to the same 
loving God who cares for boys and girls every- 
where, and a good man will ask for His blessing 
to rest upon them. 


A BOY IN OLD SPAIN 


There is an old fairy story about a magical car- 
pet and how it went traveling. If you were the 
owner of that carpet (probably it was a big rug 
covered with beautiful patterns of different col- 
ors), you could sit down in the middle of it and 
wish, and the most wonderful things would come 
to pass. Suppose you had such a carpet now. 
You would have only to say “ I wish I were in 
Spain,” and then ! 

But such wonder-working carpets are not to be 
found now. The thing most like it is your stereo- 
scope that has already taken you to England and 
Ireland, to Holland and France. It will take you 
now to Spain where you can see a real boy going 
on an errand. 

If you look in your geography and find Granada 
in the southern part of Spain, you will know just 
where you are to be. 


Position in Spain. Walls and towers of the Al- 
hambra on the majestic bank of the Douro 
River, Granada 

People sometimes call this “ sunny Spain,” and 
it certainly is sunny as we see it now. Look 
how long the shadows are, and how bright the 


A BOY IN OLD SPAIN 


57 


sunshine is on this dusty road and the walls and 
the front of that white house over on the other 
side of the river. You cannot quite see the water 
of the river from where you stand; to do that you 
would have to go out to the side of the road and 
look down over the wall, for this road runs along , 
the edge of a high bank. 

That is our Spanish boy, riding the donkey. 
The long-necked jars or bottles are full of oil. A 
great many things are carried about in this way in 
Spanish towns. The donkeys are used to it, and 
carry loads on their backs just as readily as in any 
other way. Some donkeys do have harnesses and 
draw carts just as horses do in America — there 
comes a donkey-cart at this minute with a grown 
man driving. The cart looks as if it might have 
been made for bringing loads of hay in from the 
farmer’s fields. Perhaps that donkey is on his way 
for such a load now. 

The man with the cane and knee-breeches and 
queer, pointed cap is a gipsy — they call him here 
in Granada the King of the Gipsies. His people 
live in little huts and caves in a hillside in another 
part of the town, but almost every day he dresses 
himself in these fine clothes and comes over here 
to cross the river and climb that wooded hill up 
to that old castle. A great many travelers come 
to Granada on purpose to visit the old castle; they 
talk with him and make pictures of him and always 
give him some money for the stories he tells, so 
he earns a pretty good living. 

If you were to follow this boy along the road 


58 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

towards the right, you would soon come to houses 
set quite close together, and presently you would 
find yourself in a busy town with many streets, 
shops of all sorts and churches and homes where 
the people live. Or, if you were at this moment 
away up on the top of that tree-covered hill, look- 
ing out of one of the castle windows, you would 
see the town down below spread out like a flat 
map under your eyes. 

If you could talk to this boy, you would find 
him very polite and ready to tell you all he knows 
about the town and the old castle on the hill. He 
has learned something about them in his school, 
and quite likely he may have read stories about 
the place in a book written by an American many 
years ago. The American wrote his stories in 
English and they have been translated into Span- 
ish so that Spanish boys and girls may read them 
too. If you have not yet read the book called 
“ The Alhambra,” by Washington Irving, you will 
surely wish to read it the first chance you have; 
you are seeing now, up on that hill above the 
trees, the very towers and galleries and high stone 
walls of the palace where the wonderful affairs 
told of in the Irving stories came to pass. 

This is how it happened. — About forty miles 
away, over at the farther side of that hill, the 
shores of Spain are washed by the blue waters of 
the Mediterranean Sea. If you look again at 
a map of Europe and find Granada in the southern 
part of Spain, you will see just how the Mediter- 
ranean lies between Spain and Africa. Hundreds 


A BOY IN OLD SPAIN 


59 


and hundreds of years ago, an army of people 
crossed over in ships from Africa to the shores of 
Spain, and took possession of this part of the land. 
The Moors were not negroes, though their skins 
were darker than the Spaniards’; they were rich 
and clever and brave fighters, and for a long while 
they had everything their own way. The Spanish 
hated them and grudged every bit of money they 
had to pay to keep up the splendor of the Moorish 
king, but they could not help themselves. 

It was just about seven hundred years ago that 
one of those old Moorish kings began to build the 
great palace up there on the hill. Workmen built 
high walls all around it (can you see a part of the 
walls now at the right above the trees?) and only 
through certain gates could anyone go in or out. 
In those days soldiers used to pace back and forth 
on the walls, keeping guard against the approach 
of an enemy. Inside the walls were the rooms 
where the king lived, and beautiful gardens where 
lovely ladies watched the fountains play. There 
were council rooms where the king talked over 
affairs with his generals; there were barracks for 
the soldiers; there were mosques too where the 
Moors said their prayers, kneeling and facing to- 
wards the east. The prayers were not like ours, 
for the Moors were not Christians. They had a 
different religion of their own. 

It must have been a splendid sight to see the 
king and his soldiers come riding down the hill. 
Sometimes they rode along this very road with 
gay colored saddle-cloths embroidered in gold. 


6o 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


They wore magnificent clothes of bright-hued 
silks and velvets with jewelled clasps and buckles 
and carried swords of flashing steel. Only the 
little princesses and their mothers never came 
down out of the palace. They always stayed up 
there with flowers and birds to play with and ser- 
vants to wait upon them. 

The Spanish people bore it for a long time ; one 
Moorish prince after another grew up to be king 
and forced the people of Granada and the farmers 
round about to pay taxes and so provide more 
money for the palace and the splendid clothes and 
horses. But at last the Spaniards would bear it 
no longer and the true Spanish king made war 
upon the Moors. The wars were fierce and furi- 
ous and many a good man on both sides was killed 
before the fighting ceased, but at last the Span- 
iards won. King Boabdil, the Moor, was forced 
to leave the palace up there on the height and 
hurry away with his family to reach the seacoast 
and escape in boats. The old stories tell that Bo- 
abdil’s heart was fairly broken with grief at leav- 
ing the beautiful Alhambra up on the wooded hill 
and that tears ran down his cheeks as he took his 
last look at the towers. The king’s mother was 
a stern old lady and had small sympathy for him 
in his defeat. She only said, “ Weep not, like a 
woman, for that which you could not defend like a 
man ! ” It was very hard on Boabdil. 

And when a real Spanish king and queen came 
to take possession of the beautiful great palace, 
who do you think they were? King Ferdinand and 


A BOY IN OLD SPAIN 


6l 


Queen Isabella, the very people to whom Chris- 
topher Columbus appealed for help when he 
wanted ships with which to come across the At- 
lantic Ocean to look for new lands! You remem- 
ber the histories say that Queen Isabella sold 
some of her jewels in order to give Columbus the 
ships he needed. Without any doubt Queen Isa- 
bella herself, when she was alive, went riding 
over the very road where these donkeys are now, 
for she lived many years in Granada, and when 
she died her body was laid in a tomb in one of 
the churches not far away off at your right. 

People say now, that when the Moors hurried 
away, they hoped they might sometime come back, 
and so they left great treasures of gold hidden 
away, secure from curious eyes. Some gold and 
jewels were certainly found in the palace after the 
Spaniards occupied it, but nothing has been found 
in recent years. 

That boy could tell you all sorts of stories about 
how the spirits of the old Moors still come back 
on moonlight nights to walk about the deserted 
gardens and to make sure their hidden stores of 
gold are still undiscovered. Some people believe 
that the place is a sort of fairy palace. Over one 
of its gates (you cannot see the place from here) 
a great hand is carved on the stone archway, and 
some people say that one day the hand will reach 
down and grasp the key in the gate and at that 
instant the whole castle will disappear, never to 
be seen again. 

But you must read for yourself Irving’s stories 


62 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


about the Alhambra and then you will know all 
about it. 

Surely this boy has never found any of Boab- 
dil’s gold, or he would not be jogging about town 
on the back of that little donkey, carrying oil to 
the dealer’s shop. Probably he is earning a bit of 
extra money to help his father, by working after 
school. School has been out for an hour or more. 

Do you see anything which tells you the time 
of day? No, there is no clock in sight, but those 
long shadows on the ground answer almost as 
well if you think a bit. Which way must the sun 
be — towards your right or your left? You are 
facing southwest (S.W. means southwest). If 
southwest is straight ahead of you, what part of 
the sky is that where the sun is now? Yes, it is 
the west; the sun must be at your right and a bit 
ahead of you, too, that is, at the west. And in 
what part of the day is the sun in the west? Do 
men and trees and wagons cast shorter or longer 
shadows as it grows later in the day? Longer, 
of course. It is evidently rather late in the after- 
noon, when the sun is low in the sky; you know it 
just as well as if you could see the sun itself, now 
that you have done a little thinking about it. 

The school studies here are reading and writing 
and arithmetic, with some lessons in geography 
and history. 

Just now this boy is well contented that school 
is over; indeed, one would think he might be 
happy, with that donkey to ride, and other boys 
of his age to play with when the work is done. 


A BOY IN OLD SPAIN 


63 


T here are a great many good times for boys here 
in Granada. Circuses and all sorts of interesting 
shows come to town and a boy can easily earn the 
price of admission. There are chestnuts in the 
woods near by, and it is great fun to go nutting. 
Some of the boys fish in the river and go swim- 
ming when the summer days are hot. Many Span- 
ish boys play the guitar and sing beautifully; there 
are a great many pretty songs in Spanish and 
boys learn the words by listening to each other, or 
by hearing public singers at the fairs. Gipsies are 
particularly good singers and dancers, but careful 
mothers do not quite like to have their sons play 
with gipsy boys; the cave-people are not very hon- 
est in the way they get their living. 

When this boy goes home he and the other chil- 
dren in the neighborhood play many different 
kinds of games — at least he used to play games; 
he thinks he is now too big and old for “ Blind 
Hen ” and games of that sort. You play “ Blind 
Hen ” yourself, only you call it by another name 
“ Blindman’s-buff.” They have here a curious 
way of counting-out to decide which child shall be 
blindfold. Some child picks up a little pebble and 
holds it in one hand, keeping both hands closed 
tight. All the other children pass by in procession, 
each child touching the two closed hands and then 
slapping the hand which he thinks holds the peb- 
ble. If it is not the hand with the pebble, the one 
who slapped it goes on. If the hand does hold 
the pebble, the one who slapped it must take the 
pebble and hide it in one hand just as was done 


64 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

before. When all the children have passed by and 
guessed, the last one to hold the pebble must be It. 

Small boys and girls here in Granada are very 
fond of seesaws and swings. When one girl pushes 
another in a swing she sings (in Spanish words) 
a song like this : 

“ Say good-day, say good-day 
To Miss Fanny Fly-away. 

At the door the guests are met, 

But the table is not set. 

Put the stew upon the fire, 

Higher, — higher, — higher, — higher, — 

Now come down, — down, — down, — down, 

Or the dinner will all burn brown.” * 

One of the prettiest games in Spain this boy 
used to play when he was much smaller, while lit- 
tle boys and girls had their games together. Girls 
like it better than the boys do. It is called “ Little 
White Pigeons,” and to play it in the nicest way 
you need at least a dozen children or even twenty. 
The children are divided into two lines and stand 
facing each other eight or ten yards apart, those 
in the same line holding each other’s hands. First 
the children of one row stand still with their 
clasped hands lifted high in the air, and those in 
the other row dance forward in a long chain, 
singing:— 

“ Little white pigeons 

Are dreaming of Seville, 

Sun in the palm-trees, 

Roses and revel. 


* Taken from “ Spanish Highways and Byways,” by Katharine 
Lee Bates, Copyright, 1900, by The Macmillan Company. 


A BOY IN OLD SPAIN 


65 


Lift up the arches, 

Gold as the weather ! 

Little white pigeons 

Come flying together ! ” * 

As they sing the last line the dancers loosen hands 
and skip through under the arms of the other 
children. Then they stop, a little distance away, 
turn around facing the others and hold up their 
own arms, making arches in their turn. 

Then the children who before made arches now 
play pigeons, and dance forward, taking hold of 
hands and singing: — 

“ Little white pigeons 
Dream of Granada, 

Glistening snows on 
Sierra Nevada. 

Lift up the arches, 

Silver as fountains ! 

Little white pigeons 

Fly to the mountains ! ” 

A very funny sort of dance is done by separate 
children. They lean down so as to clasp their 
hands behind their knees and then hop around, 
singing while they hop : — 


“Grasshopper sent me an invitation 
To come and share his occupation. 

Grasshopper dear, how could I say No? 
Grasshopper, Grasshopper, here I go ! ” * 

The sport this boy really enjoys most is playing 
bull-fight, when a bull tries to run his sharp horns 

* From “ Spanish Highways and Byways,” quoted before, 


5 


66 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


through men who chase him and tease him. One 
boy has to play the bull and the others prance 
around and make believe prick him with long 
spears so that he may chase them. Sometimes the 
“ bull ” is the best runner and the other boys are 
caught and have to pretend they are killed or at 
least badly wounded. Sometimes the “ bull ” is 
a slow-moving boy and then the others keep him 
busy running and leaping, trying either to escape 
them or to throw them down. It is a very excit- 
ing game; this boy and his Granada chums enjoy 
it as much as American boys enjoy a first-rate 
game of baseball or football. 

All the Granada boys have good manners. If 
you were near by when this lad was eating his 
luncheon of oranges, nuts or figs, he would be sure 
to offer you a share. If you gave him some of 
your own goodies he would never omit to lift his 
cap and say Muchas gracias (“ many thanks ”). If 
a beggar asks him for money and he has none to 
give, he never refuses roughly but always says, 
“ Pardon me, brother, for the love of God,” so as 
not to hurt the poor man’s feelings. 

If you should admire that funny little donkey of 
his and say you wished you had one, too, he would 
probably smile so as to show all his white teeth 
and say Todo a la disposicion d’ Usted — that is to 
say “It is quite at your service”; — that is his 
pretty way of saying he is glad you like it. He 
does not really mean to give it to you, but, as 
everybody here in Spain understands what is 
meant, nobody is disappointed. 


A BOY IN OLD SPAIN 


67 


I wonder what the boy will be when he grows 
up. If he is particularly bright and fond of study, 
his people may perhaps send him to college and 
make him a doctor, a lawyer, a civil engineer — 
maybe a priest. Perhaps he will have to be a sol- 
dier and leave home to fight in some war with 
another country. There were some men from this 
very town in Granada who were sent over to Cuba 
and Porto Rico to fight for Spain against the 
American forces there. The Spanish soldiers 
themselves were not to blame. They had nothing 
against the Americans; but they had to go where 
their government sent them, and many a poor fel- 
low did not live to come back home to Granada. 
Admiral Cervera, whose ships were beaten by the 
Americans at Santiago, was a brave man and a 
gallant soldier. If this little lad ever does put on 
a uniform, let us hope he will be as courageous 
and as good as that great admiral. 

But perhaps he is not to have so perilous a life 
as that. Maybe he will cross the ocean to South 
America (a great many Spaniards do emigrate to 
South America), and buy a ranch and raise great 
herds of cattle. Or, maybe, he will live all his days 
right here in Granada. Sometime, years from 
now, when you are grown up, too, you may make 
a journey to Spain to see the Alhambra, and meet 
him here on this very road alongside the river. 
Do you suppose you will know him then? 


FRIENDS THAT WAIT TO SEE YOU 
IN ROME 

There is an old proverb which says “All roads 
lead to Rome.” It is to Rome that you are bound 
now, for there a little brother and sister are sit- 
ting on some stone steps, waiting for you. 

If you do not remember exactly where Rome 
is, just look for a minute at a map of Europe and 
find the place near the western shores of Italy on 
a small river. 

Position in Italy . Peasant children on the steps 
of the Temple of Vesta , Rome 

As you stand here, you are surrounded on all 
sides by the streets and buildings of the city. 
Rome is a place almost as large as Boston or 
Baltimore. 

This brother and sister are real, live children. 
They work and study and play. They have their 
friends and their fun and their troubles, just as 
you have yours. 

You see them here in the beautiful old city of 
Rome, for they are Italians. If you could speak 
to that little maid who looks at you now so shyly 
from under her soft, dark hair, you and she would 
both be puzzled for a while, for she could not un- 


FRIENDS THAT WAIT IN ROME 69 

derstand your English at all; but you should hear 
her chattering in Italian to her industrious elder 
sister or to the big brother there beside her on the 
steps! She would think your English words so 
funny, and wonder why you had never been 
taught to say Grazie (“ thanks ”) as she does, or 
to explain — Non capisco (“ I don’t understand ”). 

See how many differences there are between 
these Italian clothes and yours. Artists think these 
Italian clothes much prettier than the clothes 
worn in America. These sisters do not care for 
hats. Very often they go bareheaded; often they 
put on what you see now — a gay-colored cap of 
woven silk or a pretty white one that can be 
washed and ironed. The little one is very proud 
of that bright-hued ’kerchief crossed over her 
breast and tucked into the belt of her apron. Be 
sure you notice her brother’s shoes with the long 
straps wound about his ankles and legs. How 
different his hat and jacket are from those of 
American or English boys. 

Not all Italian children dress like this. Some 
wear clothes- almost exactly like yours. The boy 
wears the odd jacket and shoes partly because he 
likes them and partly because artists like to sketch 
them, they are so pretty. 

Do you see what the big sister is doing all this 
time? Her fingers are never still for a minute — 
she often knits as she is going on errands and 
many pairs of stockings grow into shape during 
odd minutes like this while she is resting from a 
long walk. 


7 © 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


And what do you suppose is this place where 
she and the children are sitting? 

In the town where you live, at home, there is 
probably some house that is older than the other 
houses — one that was built many years ago. So 
the city of Rome has its old buildings; but they 
are very old indeed — much older than anything 
we have anywhere in America. Notice the stone 
steps and the great stone pillars behind the chil- 
dren’s mother. They are part of a temple where 
prayers were said to strange heathen gods long 
before Columbus had discovered our America, 
even before any white men knew there was such a 
land as America on earth; in fact, it was an old, 
old temple far back in the days when Christ was 
born. St. Peter may have seen these very col- 
umns when he came to Rome almost nineteen 
hundred years ago. 

The little sister does not know much about old 
Roman history, for she has been in school only a 
year or so, but the brother goes to school with 
boys all tall and old like himself, and the school- 
master in his room reads to them the most inter- 
esting, exciting stories about old times here in 
Italy and about brave men who lived and worked 
for Italy. The boys in his class write out the 
stories afterwards and copy them into exercise 
books for the master to read and correct. 

Some years ago an Italian man, who had been 
a schoolboy just like this boy here, wrote a book 
all about the work and the fun that one has when 
he is ten or twelve years old. Boys and girls in 


FRIENDS THAT WAIT IN ROME 


71 


Italy are as fond of that book as American chil- 
dren are of “ Little Men ” and “ Little Women.” 
You may have a chance to read it sometime for 
yourself, even without knowing Italian, for it has 
been translated and printed in English. The name 
of the book is “ Cuore,” — the diary of an Italian 
schoolboy. 

The boys and girls are in separate classrooms 
in school. When they are little, and are just be- 
ginning to read and write, they all have women 
teachers, but the older boys are taught by men. 
They carry their books in bags or in leather straps 
just as you do at home. The small girl is learning 
to read and to write, and to do easy, plain sewing; 
she can sing and she and the other girls of her 
age will soon begin to draw. When they are 
older, the teacher will take them now and then 
into picture-galleries to see some of the most 
beautiful paintings in the world — many of the 
greatest artists who ever lived have been Italians, 
and their country has a good right to be proud of 
them. Americans make long journeys to Italy 
just for the sake of seeing the beautiful pictures 
painted by Italian artists long ago and treasured 
now in churches and palaces and art museums. 

Many artists from other countries come to 
Rome to study. More than once this very boy 
and girl have stood quite still half an hour at a 
time, so that an art student might make sketches 
of their bright faces and quaint clothes. They 
often earn money in this way, and every penny 
helps, for there is not any money to spare at home. 


7 2 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


When they are romping with their friends, these 
boys and girls play many of the very same games 
you play yourself. If you were with them you 
could join in the fun, though you could not under- 
stand each other. What they call “ Blind Cat,” 
you know as “ Blindman’s-buff.” They mark on 
the ground the very same lines that you know for 
“ Hop Scotch,” and the place at the end shaped 
like a semicircle, which American children call 
“ Heaven,” they call “ Paradiso ” (Paradise), 
which means exactly the same thing. 

Sometimes they play “ Open the Gates,” which 
is almost the same as our “ London Bridge is Fall- 
ing Down.” Another game they like is played in 
this way: — All but two of the children join hands 
and form a circle — they are bunches of grapes on 
a grape vine. One girl is the owner of the grapes, 
the other is a robber. The robber comes near and 
walks around the circle and the owner says (in 
Italian) : — 

“What are you doing in my vineyard?” 

“ Stealing grapes.” 

“ Why do you steal them ? ” 

“ Because they are good.” 

“ What would you do if I chased you? ” 

“ Seize a bunch and run ! ” 

Then the robber takes some one girl out of the 
circle, and they two run as fast as possible to get 
away before the owner can catch them. The game 
is for the robber to try to get all the grapes away 
without being caught. 

A favorite trick among girls here is to shout 


FRIENDS THAT WAIT IN ROME 


73 


suddenly verdo (“ Green ”). As soon as any girl 
does that, every other girl must instantly show 
something green — perhaps a scrap of ribbon, a bit 
of cloth or worsted, maybe only a green leaf or a 
blade of grass. A girl feels very foolish if she has 
nothing green to show, and all the others laugh 
at her. 

Another bit of fun for girls is pulling leaves off 
a twig to learn how soon they are to be married. 
They count each leaf as it comes off : — “ This 
year — next year — sometime — never — this year — 
next year — sometime ! ” so it goes. 

The boys have running games, and they play 
ball a good deal, though they do not play a regu- 
lar game of baseball. They make collections just 
as boys do here — postage-stamps are favorites, 
and they are always trading stamps with each 
other. Boys who have not much money, and who 
wish to help their fathers and mothers, work be- 
fore school and after school and in vacation time, 
very much as boys do with us; they work in shops, 
they deliver parcels for the grocers, they sell 
things on the streets — there are a good many 
ways in which a bright boy can make a little 
money. 

These young folks have nearly the same things 
to eat that Americans have — they especially like 
fruits and vegetables, cheese, and salads, and eggs 
cooked in different ways, and they are fond of 
macaroni, which the Italians make better than 
anybody else. If their people have not much 
money to spend they eat a great deal of polenta — 


74 


HEAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


almost the same thing that we call “ hasty pud- 
ding ” of corn meal, and it is delicious when you 
are hungry from your work or play; so is minestra, 
a thick soup made of fresh vegetables. 

There are a great many holidays for young 
folks here in Rome, and some special fun for each 
one; they look forward to Christmas just as you 
do. The shops are full of things for holiday gifts 
— playthings, jewelry, gay ribbons and handker- 
chiefs, candies and cakes and nuts and fruit; there 
are street peddlers too with baskets full of pretty 
things or funny things, and crowds of people are 
out buying presents. There is one particularly 
delicious Christmas candy made of honey and al- 
monds — they call it torone, and another called pan- 
giallo which has all sorts of goodies in it — sugar, 
citron, almonds, pistachio-nuts; Italian children 
think it is the best candy in the world, and per- 
haps they are right. 

The churches have specially beautiful music at 
Christmas time and in many of them there are 
figures representing the Christ Child lying in the 
manger — a dimpled baby put there to remind 
everybody of the Holy One who came to the 
Mother in Bethlehem. 

Presents are given, not on Christmas Day but 
at Twelfth Night, January 6th, the anniversary 
of the time when the Wise Men brought their 
gifts to the Christ Child. This brother and sister 
understand very well that it is their father and 
mother and big sister who put presents in their 
stockings at Twelfth Night, but very little Italians 


FRIENDS THAT WAIT IN ROME 75 

sometimes believe it is an old woman called Be- 
fana, who goes about from house to house like 
our Kriss Kringle or Santa Claus. 

Then, after Christmas, work begins once more. 
There are holidays and short vacations scattered 
through the winter and spring, and about the first 
of July come the final examinations at school, 
when the children who take good rank are 
promoted to higher classes for the next year. A 
good many little Italians are fine scholars; we do 
not realize it until their parents bring them over 
to live in America and they become Americans 
themselves. It seems particularly right that they 
should come to America and help make the coun- 
try, because, you remember, it was one of their 
own people, Columbus, who first told the rest of 
the world about this land of America that might 
be used for the homes of white men. 

Only a little while ago a high-school teacher in 
one of our American cities told me that in a school 
of six hundred, where most of the boys were Amer- 
ican-born, the boy who did the best work in Eng- 
lish was a bright young Italian, whose people had 
come here only a few years before. 

All three of these Italians may come themselves 
to America some day — who can tell? Perhaps 
you may even know them sometime. They can 
tell you a great deal more about their old life in 
Rome, and you can tell them how you once saw 
them sitting on the steps of the old temple. 


HELPING FATHER IN FAR-AWAY 
AUSTRIA 


If you would like to know the kind of country 
you are to visit next, ask your map of Europe. 
First look for the great empire of Austria-EIungary 
and then find the part of that land which reaches 
farthest towards the west. It is a corner of the 
empire lying between Germany and Italy, with 
Switzerland for its western neighbor. 

Does the map make you expect to see a level 
country there, or a land of hills and mountains? 
There are not many railways through that part of 
Austria. Railway trains do take travellers to the 
largest towns, but those who wish to see the pret- 
tiest country roads and villages ride in carriages 
and stage-coaches, or else take their bicycles and 
go flying down the hills on their own wheels. But 
where there is a hill to go down there is a hill to 
go up, and that means a good deal of walking as 
well as riding. That is pleasant, too, for it often 
gives one a good chance to see more of the people 
who live in the neighborhood. 

Now what we are to do is to stand beside one 
of the steep hill roads in Tyrol, as that western 
corner of Austria is called. We shall see some 
boys and girls coming up the hill on their way 
home from the mill. 


HELPING FATHER IN AUSTRIA 


77 


Position in Tyrol . An Austrian hamlet , Val 
Ampezzo 

It is a pity they are so shy! The brother and 
sister pulling at the front of the cart will not look 
up. The sister pushing from behind is not quite 
so shy, but even she does not like to look stran- 
gers straight in the face. 

The sacks in the cart hold flour which they are 
taking home to the mother for making into bread 
and cakes. In America and England flour is usu- 
ally bought at the shops, already ground and 
packed in sacks or barrels; so it is in all the large 
towns in Austria. But up here, among the Tyrol 
mountains, each father has a farm and raises 
wheat, rye and barley in his own fields. Some of 
those very fields at the other side of the road may 
have raised crops of barley, though some of them 
are hay-fields. 

After the grain in some field near here was tall 
and ripe, the stalks were cut and the grain was 
threshed or beaten out of the ears, and poured 
into big chests or bins in the house where these 
children live. Then one day the mother found 
she needed more flour, so these sacks were filled 
from a bin and the children drew the cart to the 
mill. The kernels were ground between revolv- 
ing stones until the grains all turned to powdery 
flour. And now here is the grist in sacks, on the 
way home. 

The load is pretty heavy — that is evident; all 
three of the children will be tired when they do 
reach home, and as hungry as bears, too. 


78 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

The shoes these children wear are thick and 
heavy, you see, so as to bear a good deal of walk- 
ing and running before they are worn out. If 
they were not stout and strong they would not 
last long, for the children are always busy at some 
sort of work or play, and their shoes never have 
a chance to rest except at night. 

Those are felt hats that the children wear. The 
kerchief around the neck of the shy little girl has 
all sorts of bright colors in its border — green and 
red and blue. How pretty the full white sleeves 
are, reaching to the elbow! Almost all the girls 
and women here in Tyrol wear such sleeves; see, 
the young woman with the rake wears the same 
kind, and so does her mother. 

These grown-up people are not the mother and 
sister of the children; they are neighbors who have 
overtaken the little folks on the way. They have 
been at work in a hay-field near by. A good many 
of the men in this neighborhood go away to earn 
money as laborers in other parts of Austria dur- 
ing the summer, so the women and girls learn to 
do all sorts of outdoor work just as if they were 
men and boys. 

The young woman with the rake can do other 
things, too, which might surprise you; she can 
speak four languages — German, French, Italian 
and even a little English! You see, people are 
not necessarily dull or stupid because they live in 
a country place like this, far up among the moun- 
tains. German she has always known, because her 
people spoke that language at home when she was 


HELPING FATHER IN AUSTRIA 


79 


a child. Italy is not far away beyond those moun- 
tains; she has known people who came from Italy 
and learned from them to talk Italian. French 
and English too she can understand, because she 
has improved every chance to learn words and 
phrases from foreign travelers, or from neighbors 
who have traveled and then come back home to 
this village. 

Have you noticed the odd shape of the shade- 
hat that she wears? It is a favorite kind of hat 
in this part of the country. She too has a ker- 
chief pinned over her bright red waist; the mother 
wears one kerchief about her neck and another 
on her head. People are very fond of pretty ker- 
chiefs here and often have them for presents when 
Christmas or a birthday comes around. 

The house where these children live is built just 
like those other houses that you see in the valley. 
The houses look at the first glance as if they were 
just scattered about in the fields, but, if you look 
sharply, you will see that a road goes winding 
through the valley. One turn in the road is in 
plain sight between the house-roofs, almost 
straight over that big wooden rake which the 
young woman is carrying. 

The houses are of wood with stone basements. 
Notice how the eaves project like piazza roofs, 
sheltering the doorways from rain. And have you 
seen how many of the houses have balconies and 
stairways on the outside? Those galleries or bal- 
conies are often used for drying grain or fruit. 

If you were to visit one of those houses you 


So 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


would find everybody very kind and friendly, but 
there would be no fine carpets and elegant furni- 
ture, for this is a town of plain farmer folks with 
little money to spare. You would probably have 
bread and milk for supper — perhaps some deli- 
cious cheese. The house-mother or some nice 
girl would bring the milk in a big, clean bowl, 
and say, as she gave it to you, Wiinsch wohl zu 
speisen ; that means “ May you eat with good ap- 
petite ! ” If your visit is made on a summer day 
like this, most likely some of the children will 
have gathered a dishful of ripe, juicy blueberries 
or blackberries, and they are very nice to eat with 
thick, sweet cream. 

After supper probably a few of the near neigh- 
bors may come in and there may be some music. 
A good many of the boys and young men here 
play the violin; still more can play the zither. 
Sometimes people clear away the chairs from the 
big living-room after supper and the neighbors 
come in for a dance. Sometimes a girl with a 
sweet voice will sing and her friends join in a 
chorus. 

In winter it is cold up here among the moun- 
tains and snow lies over this road in deep drifts. 
Then mother or one of the girls builds a roaring 
fire in a great tall stove in the living-room — a 
stove as tall as a very tall bookcase, covered not 
with iron, but with earthenware tiles. It gives 
out a gentle, soft heat that keeps everybody com- 
fortable, and the girls sew or embroider or knit 
and the boys work at wood carving. Some of the 


HELPING FATHER IN AUSTRIA 8 1 

boys in this town can do very nice carving of 
flowers and bears and chamois, on pieces of wood 
for handkerchief-boxes and glove-boxes. There 
is a large industrial school only a few miles away, 
where the government pays teachers to train 
clever boys so that they may do really beautiful 
work, worth a good deal of money. 

A part of every year these children go to a 
school in the village where they study reading and 
spelling and writing and arithmetic. Their school- 
books are printed in German words. They have 
lessons in geography and history too. The school- 
master does not often tell them about England or 
America, but, for that matter, our school-books 
never say much about this lovely land of Tyrol. 
If you think it strange they do not know about 
George Washington, they would think it strange 
that you did not know about Andreas Hofer. 

Did you ever hear of their favorite hero? 
Everybody here knows his story. 


Andreas Hofer was a young countryman who 
had kept a small hotel not very far from here. He 
led the Tyrolese people a hundred years ago, when 
they were fighting to prevent Napoleon’s soldiers 
from coming in here to take possession of the 
country. The Tyrolese loved their Austrian em- 
peror, and said they would not have anybody else 
to rule their land. When they asked Hofer to be 
their general and governor he said : 

“ All who want to be my brothers-in-arms must 
fight for God, emperor and country as brave, good 
and honest Tyrolese. Those who don’t care to do 
that had better go home. My comrades-in-arms 
won’t leave me, nor will I leave you, as true as my 




6 


82 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


name is Andreas Hofer. Now I’ve said it and 
you’ve seen me ; and so — God bless you ! ” 

The Tyrolese were splendid fighters. Every 
man carried a gun, and every boy too, who was 
big enough to march with his father. Even the 
girls took part in the war; for once, when Hofer 
wanted to capture some cannon belonging to the 
enemy, he hid a number of soldiers in loads of 
hay. Girls drove the hay-wagons close up to the 
enemy’s lines, and nobody suspected that anything 
serious was about to happen, when, behold! At 
just the right instant out flashed the Tyrolese 

rifles, and that was the end of the foreign 

artillery-men ! 

In those old times the soldiers used to camp on 
mountain-sides like those you see just ahead, and 
signal from one height to another by building fires 
at night. They fought nobly for their emperor, 
but Napoleon conquered, and at last Hofer was 
taken prisoner. The enemy’s men carried him 
over the mountains into a town of northern Italy, 
and there he was shot by the French soldiers. 

These children all know a song that tells about 
the brave man’s end. This is a part of the song: — 

“ At Mantua in chains 
The gallant Hofer lay. 

At Mantua, the foe 

Took his brave life away. 

“ They bade him humbly kneel — 

He answered, ‘ I will not ! 

Here standing will I die 
As I have stood and fought. 

Upright I’ll stand within the trench, 

And cry Long live my Emperor Franz! 
Heaven guard my Tyrol land ! ’ ” 

But that was long ago. Now the Austrian em- 
peror is once more the ruler of the country; these 


HELPING FATHER IN AUSTRIA 83 

fields and hills are a part of his empire, and the 
people are happy and prosperous. Not many 
fathers hereabouts are actually rich, but every- 
body has enough to eat and to wear, and there are 
a great many pleasant things happening for the 
young folks. 

These girls played with dolls when they were 
little. Very likely they have their dolls now, 
packed away in a wooden chest, upstairs at home. 
Now they think themselves rather too old for dolls 
and games like “hop scotch” or “hide-and-seek,” 
but they like to dance and sing and tell stories, 
and every girl takes pride in being able to make 
pretty lace and embroidery for her Sunday clothes. 

This boy knows how to play baseball — not ex- 
actly as it is played in America, but a good deal 
like the American game. He and his chums are 
fond of wrestling. The grown-up men are fine 
wrestlers and every boy tries to learn. One odd 
kind of wrestling is practiced sitting down, at op- 
posite sides of a heavy wooden table. They call 
it “Fist-shoving.” The two players sit at opposite 
sides of the board, double up their fists and lay 
them on the table; then each one tries to push his 
opponent's fists off the table. If you try it, keep- 
ing your fists closed and your arms down, you 
will find the pushing is excellent practice to 
strengthen the muscles of both arms! 

There are squirrels and foxes in the woods over 
there on the mountain, and some of the village 
boys are clever hunters. Years and years ago 
there were wolves and bears too, but those fierce 


8 4 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


creatures are nowadays not often seen. It is quite 
safe to go walking in the woods, and the girls, 
who do not care to trap foxes or shoot squirrels, 
go over there for picnics. 

Some of the flowers that these girls gather in 
the woods and fields are like flowers you find 
growing where you live. Buttercups bloom be- 
side this road. Violets grow in the corners of 
some of those fields, and anemones and hepaticas 
blossom in spring near the edge of the forest. 

Most children about here have heard of the 
wonderful key-flower that grows far up in one 
of the mountain pastures. Very likely these very 
children may have searched for it, half in earnest 
and half in fun. As they grow bigger they are 
inclined to think that maybe there is no such 
flower after all. But, according to old stories, 
there was once a boy who did find the true key- 
flower. 

The boy had been sent to watch the cows in a 
pasture high up on a mountain-side, like those 
where you see the white clouds drifting by. He 
saw a strange blossom in the grass, and, when he 
picked the flower, it was just like turning a key 
in a door; a great place opened in the mountain- 
side, showing a cavern. The boy went into the 
cavern, and there were chests full of gold, and 
casks full of silver, and sacks full of rubies and 
diamonds. As you may imagine, he began to fill 
his pockets and all the time he heard a voice say- 
ing “ Don’t forget the best ! Don’t forget the 
best ! ” 

At last he could carry no more, so he came out 
of the cave and the earth closed tight, showing 
no sign of a door. Then he remembered that he 


HELPING FATHER IN AUSTRIA 85 

had dropped -the key-flower inside. That was 
what the voice meant. Of course he could not get 
into the cavern again without a key, so he used to 
hunt afterwards for another key-flower ; but, 
since that day, no living boy has yet been so lucky 
as to find one in bloom ! 

It might be dangerous to climb very far up 
those mountains. There are steep cliffs which 
only a boy with a very steady head could ever 
climb. There are deep ravines where snowdrifts 
lie hidden, unmelted through the summer. Away 
up where those clouds are drifting it may be rain- 
ing at this minute, though down here in the valley 
the day is fair. 

Do you know what will happen to the rain that 
falls on that mountain as the cloud blows by? 

The drops will gather in springs and the springs 
will overflow in running brooks. The brooks will 
go tumbling down the mountain-side, growing 
larger and deeper as they near this valley, and 
down in the valley they will pour into a small 
river. 

The river will take in the waters of the brooks 
and run on and on, joining another river beyond 
the mountains. And, at the very last, the rain- 
drops that fell on our mountain here will flow into 
the great Adriatic Sea, the part of the Mediter- 
ranean Sea which reaches up between Austria and 
Italy. 


AWAY UP AMONG THE MOUN- 
TAINS OF SWITZERLAND 


Almost in the middle of Europe, between Ger- 
many on the north and Italy on the south, is a 
land where children live all surrounded by won- 
derful sights. Find Switzerland on your map. 
See how it is covered by mountains. Notice how 
some of the great rivers of Europe begin among 
those mountains. It is away up in a valley, be- 
tween tall mountain peaks which reach far into 
the open sky, that you will find the little Swiss 
people. 

Position in Switzerland. Swiss hamlet near the 
eternal snows — Saas Fee , the Fee Glacier and 
the Alphabet 

How many persons are there in sight? Look 
carefully, for there are some you will not notice 
at all at the first glance. 

The children live close by, in a wooden house 
like those you see on the right. People do not 
paint their houses here, but the sun and wind stain 
the boards with pretty browns and grays. Do you 
remember seeing, in some other mountainous 
country, house-roofs somewhat like these? (In 
Tyrol, a part of Austria.) 

Is it summer or winter? Yes, the deep grass in 


UP AMONG THE SWISS MOUNTAINS 


87 


which the little folks are wading shows that it 
must be summer; see, it reaches almost to the 
boy’s knees. And yet at the same time you find 
those mountains beyond the house-roofs white 
with snow. That mass of white which looks some- 
thing like a great snowbank, on the steep hill be- 
yond the church, is solid ice. Look sharply and 
you will see that brooks are running down from 
its lower edge, where the ice is melting during 
warm weather, but it never wholly melts. In the 
hottest days of summer there are always great, 
glittering sheets of ice and snow up there on the 
heights above the village. 

Isn’t it a strange place in which to live? 

If you could talk with these children, you would 
find they do not think it strange at all, for they 
were born here and they have never been any- 
where else. A big level prairie or a city with 
paved and crowded streets — that they would think 
very strange; but they are used to seeing ice and 
blooming flowers side by side and they think very 
little about it. 

Where do you suppose the grandmother is 
going with that plump baby on her strong back? 
If she had a pail or a basket she might be going 
to pick wild strawberries in some pasture on the 
mountain-side; but I do not see any baskets — do 
you? All the hills around here are steep. Just 
see how steep they are over beyond the church! 
It would be too hard work for that little fellow’s 
short, fat legs to climb such a pasture, though be- 
fore long he will be as strong as the rest of the 


88 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


children. If you were to ask them where they are 
going you would probably have to speak German. 
There is no “ Swiss ” language; in some parts of 
the country people speak German, in some parts 
French, in other places Italian, and in a few places 
a curious language called Romansch. In large 
towns boys and girls often learn to speak two or 
three languages. These little folks probably do 
not understand English very well, though they 
may have learned a few words from travelers who 
come to stay in those hotels during the summer. 
(You can easily guess which buildings are the 
hotels.) Guests in those houses are often glad to 
buy wild flowers and strawberries. 

The children like to go to the hotels now and 
then, just to peep at the strange people and to 
earn a few pennies, but they like their own homes 
best. If you were to go inside one of these brown 
houses you would find that the windows open like 
doors; they do not slide up and down like most 
windows in the United States. The floors are of 
bare wood and there is not much furniture. There 
is a cupboard for dishes and space is found in a 
closet or two for putting away the bedding and 
the children’s Sunday clothes. The stove in the 
living-room is large and a part of the partition 
wall between two rooms is cut out so that the 
stove may stand partly in one room and partly in 
the next room, giving heat to both in cold weather. 
What do you think they burn in the stove? Look 
sharply at the corner of the house, outside, and 
you can tell for yourself. Had you noticed that it 


UP AMONG THE SWISS MOUNTAINS 89 

is washing day? Somebody’s mother — maybe the 
mother of these very boys and girls — has been 
making things clean and sweet, ready to fold away 
in the clothes cupboard. 

The grass in this field will be cut presently and 
dried in the sun, then stored away for the winter 
food of the cows and goats. Look again and find a 
building where there are big doors leading to a 
hay-loft. How do the men reach the doors in the 
second story? Sometimes these children sleep on 
the hay in such a loft. It is clean and quite soft, 
and how good it does smell ! The cows and goats 
stay in winter in basement stables down under the 
houses; there all will be warm and dry even when 
the snowdrifts out here in this field may be higher 
than grandmother’s head. 

Now, while the air is warm and the grass is 
growing, the animals are kept out of doors in a 
pasture above the village with some older children 
to watch them and see that they do not stray off 
too far among the high rocks. When this boy is 
just a little bigger, so that he can be trusted not 
to get into dangerous places himself, he will prob- 
ably spend long summer days far up above the vil- 
lage near the edge of the snows. He will take a 
luncheon of bread and cheese with him and stay 
till it is time for the sun to set. Then he will sing 
a song that all the cows know, to call them to- 
gether. Some of the jodels or cow-calls have Ger- 
man words; some have no real words at all, but 
only sounds like Y o-a-lo-ol-li-ho ! This is one of 
the prettiest jodels, and a boy feels very grand 


9 o 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


when he can send it ringing out, clear and strong, 
over the heights and hollows of a mountain pas- 
ture : — 



When the cows hear the call, they will remem- 
ber it is time to go home and come trooping to- 
gether; then he will drive them down here to be 
milked by the mother and the grandmother. 

Possibly that oldest girl has learned to help 
about the milking. I am sure she has learned to 
knit; the thick stockings that she and the younger 
ones wear in winter are all knit by the girls and 
grown-up women. The grandmother here even 
knows how to spin yarn from sheep’s wool and 
when she was young she knew how to weave 
woolen and cotton stuff to make clothes for a 
family, but now they do not do so much weaving 
in homes hereabouts; they buy their cloth ready- 
woven. 

The children like to have grandmother tell 
them stories about when she was a little girl. In 


UP AMONG THE SWISS MOUNTAINS 


91 


those days there were bears in the woods over 
beyond that big hotel, and wild goats used to 
scamper about on the steep high rocks away up 
there by the glacier or ice-field. Now the real 
bears are all gone, but the children often play 
they are still here, and sometimes the boy tries 
to tease the little sister by growling as if he were 
one of the big furry beasts, but she knows better ! 

Grandmother knows some beautiful German 
songs, to sing to the very, very little ones at bed- 
time. If the words were put into English, one 
song would be like this : — 

“ Sleep, baby, sleep ! 

Thy father tends the sheep. 

Thy mother shakes the dreamland tree, 

And down falls a wee little dream for thee ; 

Sleep, baby, sleep! 

“ Sleep, baby, sleep ! 

In heaven roam the sheep. 

The stars they are the lambs so small, 

The moon it is the shepherd tall ; 

Sleep, baby, sleep ! ” 

When they are seven years old, all the boys and 
girls here in Saas Fee begin to go to school. 
They read a good many Bible stories, and stories 
of men and women in old times; when they can 
read quite well they have interesting stories about 
their own beautiful country. 

One story which they learn is about a Swiss 
hero named Wilhelm Tell. The story-books say 
he lived six hundred years ago in the village of 


92 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


Altdorf, about forty miles from here, straight be- 
hind you. 


Switzerland was then ruled by Austrian officers 
who were very hard and unjust. One Austrian 
bailiff, named Gessler, lived in Altdorf, and put 
on silly airs of great importance ; he even went so 
far as to have one of his own hats set up on a 
pole in the village green and made all the people 
bow to it as they passed by ! 

This was too much. Wilhelm Tell declared he 
would do no such thing. Gessler had him arrested, 
and tried to think what could be done to punish 
him. 

Now Tell was a famous hunter with bow-and- 
arrow. Gessler remembered this, and he thought 
of a plan to injure him as much as possible. He 
called the people together on the village green. 
He made Tell’s little son stand a long way off at 
one side, with an apple on his head, and the father 
was told he must shoot the apple with his arrow. 
Fancy how terrified his friends were, lest he 
should be the means of killing his own boy ! But 
the arrow went straight to its mark and never 
touched a hair of the little son. 

Then Gessler said Tell should end his days in 
prison. They tied his hands together, and started 
in a boat to cross a long lake on the way to prison. 
A storm came up, and the boat was driven near a 
dangerous rock on the shore; Tell seized his 
chance, leaped ashore and escaped. Then he called 
together his best friends, and they vowed that 
Switzerland should be set free from the Austrians. 

It took years of fighting to win perfect freedom, 
but it was really done at last, and now for a long 
time Switzerland has been a republic, where all 
the grown men vote and every man helps govern 
his own country. 


UP AMONG THE SWISS MOUNTAINS 


93 


But it will be some time before these boys are 
old enough to vote, for they are still in school. 
The boys have gymnastics and the girls learn sew- 
ing. Thy all learn to write, too, and they have 
arithmetic lessons, so that they may make no 
foolish mistakes in business when they grow up. 

In summer time they play a game very like “ I 
spy.” One who is It shuts his eyes, and the rest 
hide. Then he goes about hunting for them and 
as soon as he sees one of the hidden players he 
runs to tag the goal, shouting Ein, zwei, drei, Jiir 
mich (“ One, two, three, for me ”). 

If there were daisies growing in this field, as 
likely as not those girls would be pulling the 
petals and counting them off to learn their for- 
tune. Sometimes they count by threes : — “ Single 
— marry — go into a convent; single — marry — go 
into a convent.” (That church whose steeple you 
see teaches the Catholic faith, and a good many 
grown-up women do become nuns.) Sometimes 
they count the petals off in this way: — “Noble- 
man, beggar-man, farmer, soldier, student, em- 
peror, king, gentleman.” 

Boys do not care so much about the daisy for- 
tunes. They would rather practice wrestling with 
each other. 

Another game which all the children play to- 
gether is great fun because everybody takes the 
part of some animal. One is It and blinds his 
eyes. The others come up one by one and tell 
{heir names. 

“ I am a bear.” 


94 REAL children in many lands 

“ Bear, you may go over by the wood-pile.” 

“ I am a cow.” 

“ You may go down in the corner of the field.” 

“lama dog.” 

“ Go stand under the window of Frieda’s house.” 

“ I am a cat.” 

“You may stand at the end of the path,” and 
so on, till all have been sent to different places 
by the blindfolded one. Then when all are in place 
he calls, “ Supper is ready ! ” Instantly they all 
begin to run back to where he stands, each one 
making a noise like the animal he chose ; the bear 
growls, the cow moos, the dog barks, the cat 
mews, and all try to reach the goal quickly for 
the last arrival has to be It next time. 

In winter there is great fun for these boys and 
girls. The snow lies deep over these fields and 
fences and during hard storms and, when the wind 
blows furious and cold, of course everybody is 
glad to stay inside the warm house. Sometimes 
snowdrifts reach away up till they partly cover 
the windows downstairs. There are plenty of 
things to do indoors; many of the village boys 
learn to carve paper cutters and little boxes and 
other trinkets out of wood to sell the next sum- 
mer; the girls have their knitting and sewing and 
some of them learn to make lace. 

When a winter storm has cleared off cold and 
the sunshine is sparkling all over the ground and 
the roofs, then the children bring out their sleds 
and have fine times sliding over the crusty snow, 
down such hills as are not too steep to be safe. 


UP AMONG THE SWISS MOUNTAINS 


95 


Grown up men have long, curved strips of wood 
( skis they are called), shaped like sleigh-runners 
and strapped to their feet, and with these they 
can travel long distances over snow that is too 
soft to allow anybody to walk in ordinary boots. 
The boy here is not yet quite old enough for skis, 
but he will probably own a pair by and by. 

When these girls are large enough they will 
very likely find work at one of the hotels during 
the summer and be able to put a bit of money in 
the bank. The boys too will find many things to 
do for summer travelers, and they will learn a 
good deal about the great world outside this little 
valley. Maybe that little fellow in the big hat may 
turn out a fine scholar and go away to one of the 
great universities to study more than can be 
learned in country schools. 

One of the most famous naturalists and most 
helpful teachers in America was a man named 
Louis Agassiz, who had been a boy in Switzerland. 
One of the things that made him famous was his 
study of the great glaciers on the Swiss moun- 
tains. When he saw great masses of ice, like that 
one which you see now over across the valley, he 
thought about it; he watched it; he climbed over 
it; he studied it in every sort of way, until he 
found out a great many interesting and important 
things about glaciers, all of which you will learn 
some day in your own school. 

The ice away up there looks only a little rough 
and broken because it is too far away for you to 
see it plainly. If you could climb away up that 


9 6 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


steep hill and' scramble up on the ice itself you 
would be surprised indeed ! The ice is very, very 
thick, as you would find by looking down from 
the slippery surface into the places where it has 
cracked open. Some of the cracks or crevasses 
are as deep as the walls of your room; some are 
as deep as a three-story house; some are far, far 
deeper than even that. There are places where 
that tall church spire might be dropped down 
quite out of sight without reaching the rocks be- 
low! Of course it is dangerous to be climbing 
around such places on slippery ice, and the chil- 
dren are never allowed to go there; but sometimes 
parties of men from the hotels go up for the fun 
of the adventure, with a man of the village to act 
as guide and show them the best way. The guide 
carries an axe, not to cut trees, but to chop out 
places in the ice in which they can step without 
slipping, and all the men in the party are tied to- 
gether with a long rope which passes about each 
man’s waist. When the rope is in place, if one 
man should slip and fall down into one of the deep 
crevasses, the others would all brace themselves 
firmly and pull him up again by the rope as if he 
were a bucket in a well! 

There are other dangers too in such mountain- 
climbing. Very often a quantity of snow away up 
on a high place becomes softened by the sunshine 
and begins to slide down the side of the mountain 
with terrific force, taking along with it everything 
that lies in its way. Sometimes loose stones and 
earth will do the same thing. Such a snow-slide 


UP AMONG THE SWISS MOUNTAINS 97 

or earth-slide is what they call here an avalanche. 
It is a fearful thing; but if it comes down without 
doing any harm to people, everybody feels relieved 
and happy. In old times such avalanches used 
often to destroy villages like this, but there is less 
danger of that sort now, for people are learning 
to plant trees on the hillsides behind their houses, 
to hold back such snow-slides or falls of stones 
and keep them from doing further damage. A 
man here in Saas Fee cannot cut down trees on a 
hillside without permission from a certain officer. 
That is to prevent people from making mistakes 
and destroying trees that are needed to keep the 
village safe. 

There are plenty of interesting things to see and 
to do if one lives away up here among the moun- 
tains. If you want to enjoy a delightful story 
written by a Swiss woman about some Swiss chil- 
dren who lived near a village like this, read 
“ Heidi,” by Johanna Spyri. It will tell you all 
about the fun of living away up on a mountain 
side, about the winters and summers, the work 
and the play and the delightful things that happen. 

Every year thousands of travelers from other 
countries come to Switzerland to see these mag- 
nificent ice-covered mountains or others like them, 
not far away. Sometime you may have a chance 
to try climbing one of these very glaciers. But 
whether you do that or not, you will always after 
this know how it looks away up among the peaks 
of the Alps. 


7 


LITTLE COUSINS IN A GERMAN 
VILLAGE 


Do you know any children whose fathers and 
mothers came from Germany? It is a beautiful 
country, and people who were born there are sure 
to be fond of their old home, no matter how much 
they like their new home. Every year thousands 
of men and women do cross the ocean in great 
steamships, bringing their little folks with them, 
to seek new fortunes in our own big and beautiful 
America. Almost everybody who does go away 
from Germany leaves some relatives behind, and 
so it comes about that many little Americans have 
cousins in Europe. 

When you studied Europe in the geography 
class at school, you found that the German Em- 
pire is a very large country. Look at a map of 
Europe now, and see how it tells you about the 
difference between various parts of the German 
Empire. The northern portions of Germany bor- 
der on the sea. The southern parts of Germany 
must be higher land — you can be sure of that, for 
the map shows mountains in the south and all the 
great rivers begin toward the southern part of the 
country, flowing down northward or northwest- 
ward to the lower level of the sea. 

Now look particularly at the river Rhine, which 


LITTLE COUSINS IN GERMANY 


99 


your map shows in the western part of Germany. 
It begins away up among the high mountains of 
Switzerland, and it ends in the Netherlands, but 
most of its course is through Germany. Any 
good-sized map of Germany shows mountains 
alongside the river. Your map probably shows 
the city of Cologne beside the river; that is the 
place where some of our delicious perfumery is 
made. 

About seventy miles up-river from Cologne 
(that is, toward the southeast) is a certain little 
village on the east bank of the river. The village 
street runs along near the water, and a mountain 
towers far above the street. What we are going 
to do now is to see some German children who 
live in that village, and who have come down the 
river road for a walk. 

Position in Germany. Storied Castles of the 
Brothers , Bornhofen on the Rhine , — south 
from the river road 

Here we are in far-away Germany on the road 
beside the famous river Rhine. You do not see 
the river itself, but it is just at the other side of 
the road, off at your right, below the bank. 

These girls live here in Bornhofen, and go to a 
village school. Do the girls in your school wear 
aprons like theirs? You cannot see their homes 
from here, but the houses where they do live are 
only a short distance away. If you look sharply 
you will see a small hotel where travelers stay 
when they come to visit the place. 


IOO 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


Did you ever see a fence just like this? Those 
big-leaved vines climbing the tall poles behind the 
fence are grape vines. Some of the finest grapes 
in the world are grown in places along this Rhine 
river-valley. 

That church spire belongs to a Catholic con- 
vent. You can see the roofs of the convent build- 
ings over beyond the vineyard and behind some 
trees. Notice the cross on the tall spire ; have you 
ever seen one just like it near where you live at 
home? 

This stone cross right here beside the road has 
the figure of Christ carved upon it, to remind 
everyone who passes by of the way in which He 
died for the sake of God’s world and God’s chil- 
dren. These little girls have been taught to think 
of Him and to say a prayer in His name when they 
pass this cross. 

A path turns in just at the left of this cross, and 
by that path you could go to the church. A good 
many strangers do come here every year to visit 
this particular church. 

The girls seem shy. Not one of them looks 
straight at us. Most likely they speak only Ger- 
man, and if you tried to talk to them in English, 
they would not understand a word you said. In 
the large towns many German children study 
English as a part of their school work, but in a 
little country place like this there is not much 
chance to learn a new language. Perhaps their 
fathers may move some day to Cologne or Ham- 
burg or Berlin. Then, when the girls go to % 


LITTLE COUSINS IN GERMANY 


IOI 


High School they will probably have English 
grammars to study and will learn by heart 


“ I am, 

Thou art, 

He or she is, 


We are, 
You are, 
They are,” 


and they will have a dreadful time learning to pro- 
nounce “ the ” and “ this ” and “ they.” German 
talk does not use any such sound as th and they 
will have to try over and over before they can pro- 
nounce the words rightly instead of saying de and 
dis and day . 

The school lessons in a country village like this 
are not quite so hard as those in the city schools, 
but still there are a great many things to learn. 
Reading and spelling and writing everybody has 
to study, and the German letters are different from 
the letters in English and American books. This 
is the way a German geography would say “ Amer- 
ica lies west of the Atlantic Ocean ” : — 

2lmerifa Itcgt toeftlidj bon bcm fltfantifdjcn 

Arithmetic must be learned too. There are 
here no dollars and dimes and cents; the questions 
ask about the cost of things in marks and pfennigs. 
If you go shopping anywhere in Germany it is 
quite necessary to know all these by heart. A 
mark is the same as an English shilling or twenty- 
four cents of American money. A pfennig is a 
quarter of an American cent. 

Besides these simpler lessons, the older boys 
and girls study German history and know all sorts 


102 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


of interesting stories about the great men of old 
times who worked and fought to make Germany 
a strong and powerful nation. The girls also have 
lessons in sewing and knitting and embroidery. 

One of the greatest days of the whole year is 
when boys and girls are confirmed in the church. 
They have first to study hard on their catechism 
till they can answer the questions perfectly; then 
one day all who are old enough march to the 
church in procession, in fresh, new clothes, and 
receive the bishop’s blessing. 

Bornhofen boys do a good deal to help their 
fathers out of doors. They learn how to look 
after grape vines like these beside the road, keep- 
ing out the weeds and keeping off insects. A 
good many of them know how to row boats on 
the river. Some of them are planning to learn 
their fathers’ trades. Probably most of them will 
go away for at least a few years to be soldiers of 
the Emperor and learn how to fight for Germany. 
Every boy who is called for must go and be a 
soldier; the Emperor does not take any but the 
well and strong. And if a boy can pass certain 
very, very hard school examinations he may be 
excused after a single year of army duty, and 
come home again. 

Suppose this big girl with the striped waist 
were to ask you to go for a walk. Perhaps you 
would all climb up a steep path to where those 
castles stand away up on the top of the hill. 

They look like the castles you read about in 
fairy stories. Indeed these very castles have a 


LITTLE COUSINS IN GERMANY 


103 


story all their own, and the girls know it very well. 
This is the story : — 

Once upon a time, many hundreds of years ago, 
long before anybody ever heard of America at all, 
a noble lord named Bayer von Boppard lived up 
in that farthest castle. He had two sons of his 
own, and a lovely young girl, the daughter of an 
old friend, came to live in his family. She was 
almost like a sister to the two boys. In those days 
robbers used to travel the road down here, so it 
was not safe for children to go roaming about 
alone as they do to-day. 

Little Hildegarde stayed almost all the time up 
there in the castle on the high hill, though some- 
times she came down here to church. The boys 
did go with their father riding on horseback and 
hunting wild beasts in the woods near by, and 
when they climbed up the hill to go home at night 
Hildegarde was eager to hear all about their ad- 
ventures. 

When the brothers were grown up they both 
wanted to marry Hildegarde, but of course she 
could marry only one of them, and she chose Con- 
rad ; so Heinrich generously said he would go 
away and let Conrad have his own share of the 
family fortune to make a new home. After he 
had gone, the father built a new castle for Conrad 
and Hildegarde, and they began to make great 
preparations for the wedding. You can see the 
new castle now, up on this nearest hill beyond the 
church spire. 

For some reason, Conrad changed his mind 
before the wedding day. He even brought home 
another wife, a strange lady whom nobody had 
seen before. Heinrich heard of it and came 
hurrying home from the wars (he had become a 
brave soldier) furiously angry to think that his 
brother could treat dear Hildegarde so badlv. 
Indeed he was so enraged about it that he was 
going to fight his own brother then and there. 


104 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


But Hildegarde said No; she wanted nobody 
to fight for her sake. She would rather not marry 
at all, but come down here to the foot of this hill 
and live in the convent and spend her days taking 
care of poor people and sick people. So she made 
the brothers shake hands and she did come down 
here to the convent which you see now over be- 
yond the grape vines, and there she lived the rest 
of her days. 

Conrad’s new wife grew homesick in the castle 
on the hill and she ran away. Then Conrad and 
his brother Heinrich lived together in the castle 
of Liebenstein (that is the one on the farther hill). 
As for the castle of Sterrenberg, which had been 
built for Hildegarde up on those rocks behind the 
church, nobody cared to live there any more, so 
now, for years and years and years and years, only 
the birds have flown in at the windows and wild 
flowers have bloomed in the sunshine about the 
great stone doorway. 

This country alongside the river Rhine is full 
of stories about knights and ladies and fairies of 
the woods and spirits of the river. Only about 
eight miles away down this very road ahead of you 
is another very high hill, all bare rock, right above 
the river. Old stories say that the Lorelei, a lovely 
witch-lady, used to sit on the cliffs at sunset, sing- 
ing and combing her golden hair; if a boatman on 
the river paused to listen, his boat was sure to 
upset and he was drowned. That was the witch- 
lady’s evil trick. 

Some of these old stories are in books that the 
children have had given to them for Christmas and 
birthday presents. 

There is always great fun for these girls at 
Christmas time. They plan for weeks beforehand, 


LITTLE COUSINS IN GERMANY 105 

just as you do, about the presents they mean to 
give their fathers and mothers and all their cousins 
and friends. Very often they make the presents 
themselves — all these girls know how to sew and 
knit and crochet; even that little one can do very 
easy stitches. Then they gild nuts and apples and 
make all sorts of gay things ready for trimming 
the Christmas tree. Every family has a tree at 
home — it may be big or it may be little, but a 
tree of some sort there is sure to be. A very fine 
one has sometimes a lovely doll dressed like a 
fairy away up on the very top. The presents are 
not hung upon the tree but only laid around it, 
so the tree itself with tiny candles stuck on the 
boughs, looks pretty for a long time, and they usu- 
ally keep it for a week or more just to enjoy the 
prettiness of it. Everybody goes to church and 
hears the beautiful Christmas music and every- 
body has gay, frosted spice-cakes to eat and there 
is fun even for those who cannot spend much 
money. 

Easter, as well as Christmas, is a happy holiday 
for our little Germans. They dye eggs all sorts 
of gay colors and hide them for surprises. There 
is always beautiful music in this church, too, at 
Easter time. 

When one of these girls has a birthday, that is 
a great occasion too. The mother bakes a cake 
and fastens candles around it; sometimes little tin 
candle-holders are stuck into the top of the loaf. 
There are just as many candles as the child has 
years. How many candles do you suppose that 


106 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

little one had on her last birthday cake? Five? 
Six? The bigger girls must have Had a good 
many more. There are almost always some pres- 
ents too for the birthday child — a pretty ribbon 
perhaps; a new dress for the favorite doll or some- 
thing of that sort. If friends come to call, the girl 
meets them at the door and says Herzliche willkom- 
men, which means “ A hearty welcome to you.” 
Then the visitor says Ich gratulire (“I congratulate 
you ”), and most likely gives her a kiss and some 
pretty present. 

The birthdays of fathers and mothers and grand- 
parents are celebrated as well as those of the little 
folks. Children always give father or mother a 
special birthday kiss and do something to mark 
the day. Maybe a pretty bunch of flowers is gath- 
ered and put in a glass of water on the table. 
Sometimes a new song is learned on purpose to 
make the day particularly nice and pleasant. 

These girls know a great many of the same fairy 
stories that you enjoy yourself — “ Cinderella,” 
“ The Sleeping Beauty,” “ Snow White and Rose 
Red ” — all those and many others are in their 
story-books at home; indeed many of the nicest 
old fairy stories that you know were written in 
German years ago, especially for German children, 
by two brothers named Grimm, and American and 
English children read them only after they have 
been translated into our English language. 

There are endless numbers of games and plays 
for children here. That big sister certainly knows 
ever so many songs that she used to sing to the 


LITTLE COUSINS IN GERMANY 


107 


little one. There is one pretty song about the 
fingers on the hand, which pleases a little brother 
or sister. The big sister counts off the fingers as 
she sings, beginning with the thumb : — 

“ This is the mother, good and dear ; 

This is the father with hearty cheer ; 

This is the brother, stout and tall ; 

This is the sister who plays with her doll ; 

And this is the baby, the pet of all ; 

Behold the good family, great and small ! ” 

Here in Bornhofen they are fond of “Hide-and- 
seek.” They play “ Blindman’s-buff ” in almost 
the same way as in America, only they call the 
game “ Blind Cow.” Boys and girls both play 
that game and “Tag.” One kind of tag is varied 
by having the children as they run try to get to 
some spot where they can touch iron. The one 
who is It cannot tag anybody while he is touching 
iron. 

Boys are fond of playing ball; the older ones 
have races and wrestling matches. 

See how thick the grass grows along beside this 
fence. Do you know how to whistle loudly with a 
grass-blade between your thumbs? It is favorite 
fun here for quite little folks. Little girls make 
dandelion-curls, too, by splitting the hollow stems 
and fastening them about their ears. Sometimes 
they make beautiful, long chains of dandelion 
stems, pushing the small end of each stem into the 
bigger end, so as to form a link. 

There is a story or story-game about the violet 
which these village children know. Perhaps you 


108 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

know it too. Violets grow on that steep hillside 
and you need a violet or else a pansy to help you 
tell the story to anybody else. 

This is the violet story: 

Once there was a man whose wife died, leaving 
him with two little daughters. Afterwards he 
married a widow with two daughters of her own 
and they all lived together. They had only five 
green chairs in their little parlor, so it was hard 
to plan for everybody to sit down. 

Now the new mother was very fond of fine 
clothes, and her own best gown was so beautiful 
that she always spread out the skirt over two of 
the little green chairs. Her own daughters had 
a chair apiece and sat one at her right and the 
other at her left. Then only a single green chair 
remained, and the father’s two girls had to sit 
with one chair between them. 

The father did not like this at all — in fact it 
made him very angry — but he could not help it; 
and, as he had a very bad cold, he sat on a stool in 
the middle of the room, wearing an orange colored 
jacket, with his feet in a tub of hot water! 

Just look at the next violet or pansy you see and 
you will find the whole family. The biggest of the 
colored petals is the stepmother, and if you look 
behind her you will see she sits on two wee green 
chairs. The petals on either side are her two 
daughters, with a tiny green chair for each. The 
other two petals are the other little sisters with 
only one green chair between them. And if you 
gently pull all the petals off, you will discover the 
father in his orange jacket, with his funny little 
legs in the tub! 

In the houses where these children live there 


LITTLE COUSINS IN GERMANY 109 

are plenty of chairs, but some of the house-furnish- 
ing is quite different from ours. The stove that 
keeps a living-room warm in winter time is cov- 
ered with porcelain tiles, not with iron. The chil- 
dren do not have big blankets tucked around them 
when they cuddle down on their beds to sleep 
through a cold winter night. Instead, they have 
another thick bed of feathers or down laid over 
them. It is nice and warm, but one has to lie very 
still. If he turns over in a hurry, the warm, puffy 
cover slips down on the floor and the sleeper 
wakes, shivering, to pull it up and fix it in place 
again. 

German mothers do not have the sheets and 
pillow-cases and other linen washed every week 
as your mother does. It is the fashion here to put 
the soiled clothes and table-linen and such things 
into a big closet and have a huge washing only 
once in two or three months. Then everything is 
scrubbed as white and sweet as can be, and the 
clean clothes are dried in the sunshine, making, 
as you can imagine, an enormous quantity of fresh 
things all at once. Mothers like to have great 
piles of underclothes and sheets and towels and 
tablecloths all ready in the house, so that there 
will be plenty to last till the next grand wash-day. 

Very likely these older girls have already begun 
to knit cotton lace and to hem pillow-cases, ready 
for the time when they shall begin to keep house 
in homes of their own. It takes a good while to 
make all that will be needed. As fast as things are 
finished, they are laid away carefully in a chest or 


1 10 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


a big bureau. The girl who makes the most things 
and the prettiest things, ready for the home some- 
time by and by, is greatly praised by her mother 
and the neighbors. 

All these girls know a good deal about house- 
keeping. Their mothers at home teach them how 
to make bread and soups and how to cook vege- 
tables and prepare coffee. They know how to 
sweep and dust and they can scrub a wooden floor 
so white and clean you would not mind using it 
for your supper table. Whenever they do have 
homes of their own they will be likely to be good 
housekeepers. 

And without any doubt they can sing. Almost 
all the German children in the villages about here 
know how to sing and enjoy it immensely. Some 
of the most beautiful music in all the world has 
been written by German men. 

In your own school at home you probably sing 
a good many songs whose music was written here 
in Germany and which was meant to be sung with 
German words. Quite likely you know this beau- 
tiful Christmas hymn. These Bornhofen girls 
know it well, and every year, when Christmas 
comes, they sing it too: — 

“ Quiet night, holy night ! 

World asleep, vigil keep 
Only the holy Mother and Boy ; 

Wonderful Child of hope and joy, 

Rest in heavenly peace.” 


LITTLE COUSINS IN GERMANY 


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AFTER SCHOOL IN DENMARK 


Do you know where Copenhagen is? You can 
find it on your map of Europe, if you look in the 
eastern part of Denmark, just where a narrow 
channel of water separates Denmark from Sweden 
and lets the Baltic flow out towards the open 
ocean. The city is about as far north as Glasgow 
and Edinburgh. 

The city of Copenhagen was built hundreds of 
years ago. There are wide streets and narrow 
streets, canals and bridges, and shops and churches 
and schools very much like those you have seen in 
your own country. There are palaces, too, where 
the King and the Crown Prince live, and there are 
streets and streets and streets full of houses where 
boys and girls live and work and play. 

Danish people are very fond of trees and flow- 
ers, and they have kept a good many pieces of 
ground for parks and gardens; there nobody may 
build a house or a shop, but everybody may walk 
about or sit on the benches, or read or talk or 
watch the birds or play games, or do anything he 
likes. 

Now we are going to see a favorite place beside 
a little pond in one of those parks. It is late in 
the afternoon, so school is out, and an army of 
children have run ahead of us and reached the 
place first. We shall find them in possession. 


AFTER SCHOOL IN DENMARK 113 

Position in Denmark . Fun for boys and girls 
on their favorite playground . Ostre Anlaeg, 
Copenhagen 

Here they are, big and little! I should not 
wonder if some of the wee babies in the carriages 
had been here with their mothers or nurses all the 
afternoon. Look carefully and you may find a 
doll-carriage, too. 

The grown-up people often sit on that bench 
which you see at the foot of the hill, and watch the 
games. The bench makes a very good table, too, 
if you wish to play tea-party, only of course you 
must clear things away very neatly, after the party 
is over. 

The sand on this table and in that big heap on 
the ground is nice and clean, so that it never spoils 
anybody’s clothes, no matter how it is handled. 
Do you see how this nearest boy is making tall 
loaves, by pressing sand into a tin mould and then 
turning the mould over so that the loaf slips out? 
Tin moulds in all sorts of shapes are sold in the 
shops, and children often have sets of them for 
Christmas presents, so that they can make stars 
and crescents and rosettes and all sorts of shapes 
like the cakes mother bakes in the oven at home. 

What do you suppose the girl just beyond him 
is going to make? Probably it will be something 
funny. Don’t you wish she would show it to us 
now? 

Perhaps it was the shy little girl in the white 
apron and white hat who made that fine row of 
8 


1 14 HEAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

sand-cakes along the farther end of the table. Do 
you see her? She is almost hidden behind the big 
girl, and she holds something in her hand as if 
she were eating a real ginger-cake. Have you 
noticed what she is playing with now? You see 
children roll hoops here, just as they do in the 
town where you live. 

There is another bench at the left, quite full of 
little folks. Do you see that one child has a jump- 
rope? She enjoys it as well as you would, and she 
can jump well, too, swinging the rope forward or 
backwards over her head or back and forth be- 
neath her feet — you know how many different 
things can be done by a clever girl with a good 
rope. 

I wonder what those boys, away over near the 
other long bench, mean to do with the sticks they 
carry. Do you see three of them with long sticks 
just alike? Probably they are to have a game of 
hockey in an open field near here. There are fine 
big spaces for playing running games, so that 
everybody may have a good time without getting 
in other people’s way. 

Look carefully at the children’s faces. Notice 
their clothes and their shoes. Are they like yours 
or different from yours? 

Sometimes boys and girls bring boats to sail on 
the pond. That is usually done when there is a 
holiday, for it is a bother to carry a boat to school 
and if you wish to come here right from school 
you need to have the boat all ready. 

School begins at nine in the morning and lasts 


AFTER SCHOOL IN DENMARK 115 

until noon; then there is an intermission for din- 
ner or lunch. The afternoon session usually lasts 
from two until four. A great many of the little 
folks here now are too small to go to school. 
Children here in Copenhagen do not usually go 
until they are six years old; then they study al- 
most the very same things that you study, only 
their school-books are printed in Danish instead 
of English words. Of course they do not learn as 
much about the geography and history of the 
United States as American children do in your 
school, but, on the other hand, they know more 
about the geography and history of Europe. 

There are fine, large school buildings here, as 
nice as those we have in America. Many of the 
schoolrooms have beautiful pictures on the walls 
and plaster casts of famous statues. Some of the 
casts are like the beautiful marble statues made a 
great many years ago by a famous sculptor who 
was born and brought up right here in this very 
city of Copenhagen. His name was Bertel Thor- 
waldsen. Most likely he did his first modelling 
with sand as these other Danish children are doing 
now. His father was a ship-builder, and Bertel, 
when he was not much older than this nearest 
boy, used to carve beautiful shapes out of wood, 
to be fastened upon the bows of his father’s ships 
— figure-heads they were called. When people 
saw what good ideas he had, and how hard he was 
willing to work, they gave him money to go to 
an art school and study so that he might learn 
how to model in clay. Prize after prize he took 


1 16 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


in the art school, and by and by his teachers sent 
him to Rome, in Italy, where he could learn still 
more. In Italy he worked so hard and so happily 
that he became one of the most famous sculptors 
of his time, and you can imagine how proud the 
people were here in Copenhagen, to say “ Oh, yes 
— we know him well; why, we used to go to school 
with him ! ” 

Boys and girls here learn to use their heads and 
their hands, too! They have singing and gym- 
nastics and drawing, and the boys learn how to 
make all sorts of things in wood, using sharp 
knives and chisels, saws and planes. These little 
girls will all learn to cook and to sew as fast as 
they grow big enough. 

One favorite luncheon out here in the park is 
a sort of delicious sandwich; Copenhagen people 
call a sandwich smorrebrod. Sliced bread is evenly 
buttered, and then covered with savory sausage- 
meat or something of that sort. Danish children 
take such sandwiches to school for luncheon and 
carry them to picnics; they have a great many 
picnics, too. 

There are a good many beautiful parks and 
gardens here in Copenhagen, and crowds of peo- 
ple go to them on Saturday afternoons and holi- 
days. At these parks there are concerts and all 
sorts of games and amusements. Often there are 
beautiful fireworks in the evening. Almost every- 
body can afford to go and to have a good time, 
for Danish people are sensible and industrious; 
they are not afraid of work, and so most of them 


AFTER SCHOOL IN DENMARK 117 

can earn money enough to live comfortably and 
have plenty of fun along with their work. Parents 
and children have a good many family picnics. 

Children here are usually polite and well-be- 
haved. The very babies soon learn to say Velbe- 
komme (“ welcome ”) to a visitor, and Farvel; 
Komigjen (“Good-bye; come again”) when the 
visitor goes away. One of the customs seems 
odd to us; at the end of a meal at home the little 
folks say Tak for mad (“Thanks for the meal”); 
that is the way their mothers have taught them. 

These children whom you see now play a good 
many of the very same games that you play your- 
self — only they chatter in Danish while they play. 
One kind of “ tag ” which they like begins in a 
funny way. A number of children gather in a 
group and one outside asks these questions and 
gets these answers — 

“What have you there?” — “Bread and cheese.” 

“ Where’s mine ? ” — “ The cat got it.” 

“Where’s the cat?” — “In the forest.” 

“Where’s the forest?” — “Fire burned it.” 

“ Where’s the fire? ” — “ Water quenched it.” 

“ Where’s the water? ” — “ Ox drank it.” 

“ Where’s the ox? ” — “ Butcher killed it.” 

“Where’s the butcher?” — “Rope hung him.” 

“ Where’s the rope? ” — “ Rat gnawed it.” 

“ Where’s the rat ? ” — “ Cat caught it.” 

“ Where’s the cat? ” — “ Behind the church door. 
The first one who laughs will catch it ! ” 

Then they all scatter and run, and the one who 
asked the questions tries to catch them. 


Il8 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

Christmas is a great time for surprises and frol- 
ics here in Denmark. Boys and girls save up their 
money for weeks beforehand so that they can give 
presents. The school lessons in drawing and in 
wood-work help them to make all sorts of pretty 
things, and the girls know how to sew and knit 
and embroider. The shops offer pretty new things 
for presents, and street peddlers have big baskets 
full of toys and cakes and candies. Farmers’ wag- 
ons from the country come at Christmas time 
loaded with little trees all green and smelling of 
the fragrant woods where they grew. 

Did you ever read Hans Andersen’s story about 
“ The Fir Tree,” and the wonderful things it saw 
— 'how it grew up out in the woods and then how 
it was taken away to be a Christmas tree? It is a 
delightful story which you find printed in English 
in a great many different books for children; it 
was written ever so long ago in Danish by a Dane 
who lived right here in Copenhagen, the very 
town where you are now. He used to walk around 
the streets and talk with the children in the parks, 
just as these grown-up women do here. 

Hans Andersen wrote a great many other stories 
besides “ The Fir Tree.” These little folks know 
them by heart, and so do a great many American 
children, too. Do you know the one called “ The 
Tinder Box?” It begins: — 

“ There came a soldier marching along the 
high-road — One, Two! One, Two! He had his 
knapsack on his back and a sabre by his side, for 


AFTER SCHOOL IN DENMARK 1 19 

he had been in the wars, and now he wanted to go 
home. And on the way he met an old witch — ” 

You ought to read that if you do not know it 
already. Then there is one about “ The Hardy 
Tin Soldier ” which is both funny and sad — and 
a pretty one about the different things that hap- 
pened to five peas growing in one pod — do you 
remember that one? It begins: — 

“ There were five peas in one pod. They were 
green and the pod was green, and so they thought 
all the world was green.” 

Danish people are naturally proud to think 
Hans Andersen was one of them, for his stories 
have been translated into a great many different 
languages, and are read by children in different 
countries all around the world. 

Danish boys and girls are not all perfect, of 
course, but a great many of them have done things 
that are worth doing, and done them well. The 
sweet and beautiful Queen of England (the grand- 
mother of little Prince Edward whom you saw in 
London) was a Dane and used to live here in 
Copenhagen when she was a little girl. The King 
of Greece was a Copenhagen boy, and many a 
time he has played games just like those boys 
with the hockey-sticks. Some Danes have gone 
to America to live. One of them, a man named 
Jacob Riis, has lived in New York City for many 
years, and worked tremendously hard to make 
that a cleaner and safer and happier place for New 


120 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


York boys and girls. He has done so much to 
help, that President Roosevelt, who knows him 
well, once said, “ I consider him the most valu- 
able citizen of New York.” 

If any of these children should some day go 
over to America to live, let us hope they in turn 
will prove to be just that sort of good Americans. 


LITTLE NEIGHBORS OF A NORSE 
WATERFALL 


Norway is a land of waterfalls. Any good map 
will tell you why. Just look and see how moun- 
tains stand only a little way back from the sea- 
shore. The whole country lies so far to the north 
that the winters bring quantities of deep snow. 
When the warm spring sunshine melts the huge 
snow-drifts high up on the mountains, the water 
has to run down somewhere, somehow, to reach 
the sea, so it makes brooks and rivers everywhere. 
As the mountains are so many and so high, it 
often happens that the running streams come to 
steep, jumping-off places. There you find the 
waterfalls. 

Look once more at a map which shows Nor- 
way, and find the town of Bergen on its western 
seacoast. Several country roads lead over the 
hills and around the hills, going from Bergen to 
other towns. If we were to follow one of those 
roads, and ride seventy-five miles up into the 
mountain country northeast of Bergen, we should 
come to one of the prettiest waterfalls in all Nor- 
way. It is right beside the house where some lit- 
tle folks live all the year around. 


122 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


Position in Norway. Children at play in a farm- 
er's field before the terraced Tvinde waterfall 
near Vossevangen 

Here they are ! They were playing with those 
whirling pin-wheels, but now they have paused 
in the game to look with wondering amusement 
at the American clothes of the strangers who have 
come into their field. Just think how far away 
from your own home this field is ! 

Two of these little girls are dressed in their very 
best clothes, such as they wear to church on Sun- 
day. Do see how fine they look with those long 
embroidered aprons, and the odd little short jack- 
ets trimmed with gay colors across the breast. 
And aren’t the small bonnets pretty over the fair, 
flaxen hair? No doubt those little sisters are en- 
joying the importance of their holiday clothes just 
as well as your little sister enjoys her best things, 
when mother puts them on. All the same, they 
would better be careful, when they run with the 
pin-wheels against the wind, that they do not fall 
and soil the aprons and tear the best skirts. It is 
really more fun to play in strong, plain clothes, 
which you may forget entirely in the fun of a 
grand race or a sudden scramble. 

How many playmates are there in all ? Do you 
see any that you feel sure are brothers? 

Did you ever make pin-wheels like these? Most 
children have made them; it is very easy. You 
need a piece of strong paper five or six inches 


NEIGHBORS OF A NORSE WATERFALL 


123 


across, a small stick for a handle, and one good, 
straight pin. First you take the paper and you 
cut or tear it into an exact square; then you cut 
or tear a diagonal slit from each corner about half 
way across towards the centre of the square. That 
divides each corner in two, so that you have eight 
corner-pieces around the edge. Then you bend 
every other one of the corner pieces over towards 
the centre. Push the pin through each one and 
through the middle of the square. Stick the pin 
in the end of your handle and there is your wheel. 
Every breath of wind makes it whirl, and, if you 
run fast, holding it out straight ahead of you, the 
whirling is sometimes so fast you can hardly see 
the paper arms at all. Try it and see. 

But the children would better not run around in 
this deep grass. If they do, somebody may come 
to one of those open windows and say, “ Don’t 
tread the grass down, children — let it grow so that 
there will be plenty of hay for the cows next win- 
ter!” And the children will think — “Sure enough! 
If the grass is trampled it will not make nice hay, 
and the cows will need all the good, sweet hay 
they can get when the deep snow comes.” And so 
they will scamper out of that tall grass and play 
nearer the house and the wood-pile. 

Already the children’s father has once cut the 
grass in this field and hung it on a sort of fence 
or trellis to dry; — that is the hay-rack now, off at 
your right. Beyond the hay field, over nearer the 
falls, is a vegetable field. Still farther away he 
has a patch of some sort of growing grain — you 


124 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


can see that just over the thatched roof beyond 
the wood-pile. 

Just think of living every day in such a beau- 
tiful place as this, beside a river that looks as if 
it came tumbling out of the very sky! The water 
you see now, leaping and scrambling and dancing 
down over that steep mountain-side, comes from 
springs and brooks still farther up, where last win- 
ter’s snows are still melting under the summer 
sun. After it reaches the foot of the cliffs, there 
beyond the house, it will flow away in a noisy 
little river; then the river will go on and on among 
the hills, till finally it will reach the deep, salt 
waters of the northern Atlantic Ocean. 

Have you noticed how curiously the rock is 
ranged in layers, like steps in a giant’s stairway? 
When you study geology by and by, you will find 
that such rock-layers (“ strata,” the geologists 
call them) tell the most marvellous things about 
how this world took shape long, long, long ago, 
before any men lived on the earth at all. 

In some parts of Norway there are cities with 
fine large buildings of brick and stone, paved 
streets and electric cars and electric lights, beau- 
tiful shops, and homes full of things elegant and 
expensive. But, after all, children brought up in 
a lovely place like this have the best of Norway 
for their very own. 

Most of the farm-houses in this part of Norway 
are built like the one here, with a stone basement 
and wooden walls above. Not many of the houses 
are painted; they are usually left like this, to turn 


NEIGHBORS OF A NORSE WATERFALL I 25 

all sorts of pretty browns and grays where the 
sun and rain beat on the timbers and boards. 

Do those windows open in the same way as the 
windows of your house at home? 

See how the grass is growing in thick patches 
on the roof. It is a good thing, too, for the win- 
ters bring bitterly cold weather in this valley, and 
a coat of turf on the house-roof is like an extra 
blanket over one’s bed! 

If you were to go into the house, you would find 
it quite plain and bare, without many carpets or 
curtains, but everything would be comfortable and 
cosy. You would find a bench built along two 
sides of the living room, making a big corner seat. 
The dinner table is set in that corner of the room, 
so that the benches are all ready for seats. 

They have very good things to eat here in Nor- 
way. The children think their mother makes the 
nicest things in the world. The bread here is not 
baked in big puffy loaves nor in long sticks, but 
in big fiat, hard cakes, as large as the biggest 
dinner-plate you ever saw. The children often 
eat it with cheese. Fish of different kinds — her- 
ring, cod and the like, can be bought in the near- 
est village; sometimes fathers and big brothers 
catch other fish — small ones — in the mountain 
brooks near here. Sausages the mother makes 
herself. Potatoes and cabbages grow in that gar- 
den patch you see yonder. The children drink 
milk and the grown-up people are fond of hot 
coffee. Sometimes they have ginger-snaps, and 
a delicious creamy stuff made of sour milk, all 


1 26 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


thick and quivery, with sugar sprinkled over it. 
Christmas Day and birthdays there are likely to 
be a big roast of beef and a frosted cake. 

After each meal boys and girls always say 
“Thanks for the food, dear father and mother.” 
That is the way they have been taught, and it 
would be very queer and rude to omit it — as bad 
as running off to bed without saying “ Good- 
night. ,, 

The village school, where these children gq 
every day in term-time, takes in children of all 
ages, from little bits of boys and girls just learn- 
ing the alphabet, up to boys and girls who are 
quite tall and old — perhaps fourteen or fifteen. 
The lessons are in some ways the same as your 
own, that is, the children are taught how to read 
and to spell, and to do problems in addition, sub- 
traction, multiplication and division. But the 
words in the reading books are Norwegian words, 
not English; the arithmetic examples tell about 
krone and ore instead of shillings or cents. Of 
course they study the history of Norway more 
than the history of America and England. 

By the way, do you know that Norwegian sail- 
ors went across the Atlantic Ocean and explored 
parts of America long before the time of Colum- 
bus? It is so. The Norwegian, or Norse people, 
have always been brave sailors, fond of adventure, 
and a captain from Norway knew parts of Eastern 
Canada and New England long before the time of 
Columbus. But the Norwegians did not say much 
about it, and nobody realized how large and im- 


NEIGHBORS OF A NORSE WATERFALL 


127 


portant the new lands were, so very soon most 
people forgot all about their existence. 

There are a good many interesting stories that 
these children will learn when they are old enough 
to study the history of their own land. The little 
ones probably could not tell you why the Seven- 
teenth of May is celebrated in the village with 
cannon-firing and rockets and Roman-candles, 
much like the American Fourth of July. When 
they are older they will know it is because that 
day is the birthday of Norway. It was on the sev- 
enteenth day of May, 1814, that the country ceased 
to be ruled by the King of Denmark. 

The children think that some of the nicest les- 
sons in their school are the ones where they learn 
to do things with their hands. The boys whittle, 
and carve wood, and weave baskets from tough 
willow twigs. The girls sew, and crochet and em- 
broider. When Christmas time comes around, 
they are able to make all sorts of pretty things 
for presents. 

There is great fun at Christmas time. The chil- 
dren keep all their gifts hidden away until that 
time, so that nobody will know about them. 
Things are wrapped in ever so many papers, and 
marked in disguised handwriting so as to puzzle 
Fader and Moder (that is the way they say 
“ Father ” and “ Mother ”). Mysterious parcels 
will be found on people’s doorsteps — nobody 
knows how. There will be presents for every- 
body. The boys will even tie handfuls of wheat 
and barley to those hay-poles or in some such 


128 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


place, as a gift to the hungry winter-birds. Then 
on Christmas Day everybody will go to church. 
There the men and boys will sit at one side of the 
church and the women and girls at the other side, 
but all together will sing Christmas hymns with 
Norwegian words, and feel very glad they are 
alive ! 

On the first Monday in Lent the children have 
a grand frolic; that is supposed to be the one time 
in all the year when they may do any sort of thing 
they choose. Just for fun, they sometimes get 
switches from the birch trees and carry them 
home to whip their father and mother. It is the 
same kind of make-believe Whipping that children 
in our country sometimes get on birthdays — but a 
Norwegian father sometimes pretends it hurts him 
dreadfully, and promises to be very good all the 
rest of the year. 

These little people have never seen any very 
large city, but if you could talk together they 
would tell you about all sorts of good times that 
they have here at home. 

This is the way they say “ Good-morning ! How 
do you do? ” God morgen! Hvordcm hdr De det? 

Perhaps they might ask you Taler De Norsk ? 
That means “ Do you speak Norwegian? ” 

Then one of them might question Hvad hedder 
Duf (“ What is your name? ”) 

Very likely they might think your name very 
funny, because they had never heard it before. 
Boys here are often named Eric or Evert or Knut 
or Ole; one of the most famous violin players in 


NEIGHBORS OF A NORSE WATERFALL 1 29 

the whole world was a Norwegian named Ole Bull. 

In summer time these children might invite you 
to go with them and pick flowers and blueberries 
in the mountain pastures; there are no more deli- 
cious blueberries anywhere than grow on some of 
these Norwegian hills. Or the big boys would 
show you their pet pigeons or take you into the 
woods to hunt for rabbits and squirrels. The hills 
are steep and rough, so the smallest girls would 
probably rather stay here near the house and bring 
out their dolls for your entertainment. 

If they asked you to play “ Blind Thief ” with 
them, you might at first be puzzled, but, just as 
soon as the game was fairly begun, you would 
find it the same as our “ Blindman’s-buff.” 

There is another familiar game which they often 
play out here before the house. The words are 
of course Norwegian but the game itself is almost 
exactly like 

“ Here we go round the mulberry bush 
The mulberry bush, 

The mulberry bush, 

Here we go round the mulberry bush 
So early on Monday morning.” 

Some of the best fun of the whole year comes 
in winter time. The bedrooms in this house are 
pretty cold then. The windows which you see 
now wide open will be shut tight, and have their 
panes covered with frost. Water-pitchers will 
often be found frozen in the morning, and a grand 
pillow-fight will be a good thing to keep one from 


9 


130 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


shivering when he first jumps out of bed to the 
bare wooden floor. But, after eating a nice warm 
breakfast, winter seems almost the best part of the 
whole year. There is always a good deal of snow 
lying over this field. That waterfall freezes on the 
rocks and looks like a tangle of giant icicles. Then 
these boys get out their skis — curving strips of 
tough wood, each one nearly as long as the “ run- 
ner ” of a sleigh. The skis are fastened to the feet 
somewhat like skates ; then away go the boys over 
the snow-drifts, up and down the hills, never sink- 
ing into the snow at all! It is the great desire of 
every boy in this part of Norway to be able to 
run fast on skis, to slide on skis down long slip- 
pery hillsides and even to jump with skis on his 
feet, from high rocks to snow-drifts down below, 
never falling but skimming lightly over the clean 
glittering snow with the speed of the winter wind ! 
There is a book called “ A Norse Boyhood,” 
which you will find full of interesting stories if 
ever you have a chance to read it. The author 
was a boy in Norway years ago, and afterwards 
became a professor in an American university at 
Ithaca, New York. 

When these boys and girls are a little older, 
some of them will spend beautiful, long summers 
camping in a little cabin, on a mountain away up 
beyond the cliffs where that waterfall comes down. 
Somebody has to do that every year, in order to 
take care of the cows that are feeding in the moun- 
tain pastures. The mountain paths are too long 
and too steep to have the cows driven home every 


NEIGHBORS OF A NORSE WATERFALL 131 

night, and yet they need a chance to nibble the 
sweet green grass; so a few people stay with them 
all summer long, milking them at morning and 
night, and making butter and cheese ready to 
bring down to the house here at the end of the 
season. 

Very likely these children think they would 
jump at the chance to have such a long picnic. 
Possibly they have wished for it when they were 
listening to the sound of this waterfall. 

Nobody quite believes it, but people say there 
is a Nixy or water fairy who lives somewhere un- 
der those falling curtains of watery lace. Some 
folks say she sings to herself and that if one listens 
very long and very hard, especially on midsum- 
mer night, one may actually hear her singing. If 
that does happen, the listener is a very lucky child, 
for the Nixy will grant him three wishes. 

It is quite possible that these very children may 
some day go with father and mother across the 
sea and make a new home in America. Many and 
many and many Norwegians do go every year. 
Look well at the children’s faces, so that you may 
know them if you ever see them in your own 
happy land. And then you can ask them for 
yourself; “ Did you ever hear the Nixy singing? 
And did your three wishes really come true?” 


IN CAMP IN GREENLAND, NEAR 
THE NORTH POLE 

“ As cold as Greenland/’ people say on a winter 
day. Indeed, the cold in that far north country 
is bitter and deadly during the long winter, when 
ice is thick over the Arctic seas and snow lies 
deep over the Arctic lands. But in June the chil- 
dren who live in Greenland have plenty of fun; 
they enjoy their out-of-door life as well as you en- 
joy a long summer vacation in the country. 

Suppose we pay a visit in northern Greenland, 
and see for ourselves what midsummer is like, 
away up near the North Pole. You will not find 
on your map of the western hemisphere any town 
marked at the spot where you are going visiting. 
There is no town near by. But, if you look for the 
parallel line that marks 80 degrees north latitude, 
and trace it to where it crosses the west coast of 
Greenland, that spot is very near the place where 
you are invited to see some Esquimau children, 
and their home, and their furry dogs. 

Position in Greenland. The tvorld's most unique 
inhabitants — Esquimaux and their toupiks or 
summer tents 

Other Americans or Europeans have been here 
before us, that is certain, The father of the fam- 


IN CAMP IN GREENLAND 133 

ily is wearing a suit of clothes given to him by a 
member of an exploring party, and he feels very 
fine, dressed in woven woolen stuff such as he 
never owned before. If you look carefully, you 
will see in the distance some white explorers from 
our own land, who have brought the new clothes 
to this far-away country. 

Aren't the children funny, with their yellowish 
brown faces, their thick shirts and clumsy trous- 
ers? How many children are there? They look 
fat and heavy, but that is partly because their 
home-made clothes are so thick and so queerly 
cut. Boys and girls are dressed so nearly alike in 
this family it is hard to guess which of the chil- 
dren know how to sew (the girls learn to sew) 
and which are learning to harness the dogs and 
to throw sharp spears and to make bows and ar- 
rows (all that is boys’ work). 

Those baggy shirts are made of the skins of 
wild ducks; the trousers are the skins of fawn or 
young deer. The long-legged boots are of seal- 
skin with the hair on the inside; they are like big, 
thick stockings, with soles strong enough for a 
great deal of scrambling over the rocks in summer 
and the ice and snow in winter. 

The mother made them all herself. When the 
skins were taken off the creatures that had worn 
them, they were well scraped and dried to make 
them clean. Then they were rubbed and pulled 
to prevent them from growing hard and stiff. The 
sealskin for the boots she has chewed all over on 
the inner side, a little bit at a time, so as to make 


134 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


it nice and soft for the children’s feet ! The mother 
has no scissors, but she cut the skins with a bit 
of sharp bone. Then came the sewing. The 
needle was a slender piece of whalebone, cut to 
a point, and the thread was long strings or sinews 
drawn out of the legs of deer that had been killed 
for food. And, when the clothes were all done, 
these children were as pleased and proud as you 
were with the prettiest things you ever wore to a 
party. 

There is no question here of every-day clothes 
or best clothes — things to wear to school or to 
church or going shopping — and for a very good 
reason. There are no schools. There are no 
churches. There are no shops. You can see that 
any extra clothes would just be in the way, for 
the house has not a closet nor a cupboard nor a 
trunk nor chest — not even a nail nor a hook for 
hanging a thing up off the floor. 

When that smallest child was a little baby (that 
is, until it was a year or two old), it bad no clothes 
at all, but was carried about in a fur pocket inside 
the mother’s waist, where it was all warm and 
cosy. But it is certainly a good deal nicer to have 
clothes of one’s own instead of just staying in 
somebody’s big pocket ! 

The mother is that grown-up person who stands 
at the left, behind the two little folks. She wears 
a shirt and trousers of deer-skin much like those 
the children are wearing, and you notice she has 
braided her hair in two braids, one behind each 
ear. She does not look very pretty, but she is 


IN CAMP IN GREENLAND 


135 


fond of the children and works hard and patiently 
for their sake and they think she is the nicest 
mother anybody could wish to have. 

That young woman with the embroidered shirt 
and petticoat is very proud of her own fine clothes 
and is delighted to show them. Ta-koo , she says 
to us; that means “Look!” See how carefully 
she has stitched patterns all over the skirt, with 
her whalebone needle, and how she has trimmed 
the waist with a fringe of leather cut into narrow 
strips and strung with beads. It is really wonder- 
ful to think that any woman in a place like this 
could do so fine and fanciful a piece of work. She 
knows it, too. That smile on her face means that 
she is enjoying our admiration. Can you see her 
bead bracelet? The beads are made of bits of 
bone, rounded and pierced with holes, and strung 
on a cord of reindeer-sinew like her sewing thread. 

There are the dogs, one wagging a beautiful 
big tail; see, there is even a puppy, trotting around 
on his small legs. I wonder if when he grows up 
he will have a beautiful, bushy tail like the others. 
How many dogs can you see? They are great 
friends of the children. The boys play with them, 
and race with them, and feed them pieces of blub- 
ber or tough, oily flesh from the walruses that 
have been caught along shore. Dogs like these 
are fed not oftener than once a day — in winter 
only once in two or three days, for then food has 
to be used carefully to make it last. 

The dogs always seem hungry, eager to snatch 
and steal anything eatable. I should not wonder 


i3 6 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


if those tin buckets up on the shelf above the tent 
door were set there to keep some sort of food out 
of the dogs’ reach, for sometimes they get so hun- 
gry they even gnaw their own sealskin harnesses, 
unless the collars and straps are carefully put up 
high above the reach of their claws and jaws. 

(By the way, those tin things must also have 
been presents from the exploring white men. 
Very likely they may have been brought by the 
same persons whom you see over yonder — the 
ones who gave Father Esquimau his fine clothes!) 

Those dogs deserve meals as good as the family 
can afford, for they are the strong and clever crea- 
tures that act as horses in this far north country, 
drawing sledges, with whalebone runners, over 
dreary miles and miles and miles and miles of ice 
and snow. It is a part of their work to go out 
with the hunters and drag home the heavy crea- 
tures that have been killed — bears sometimes, and 
great soft-eyed deer, or furry seals and fat, awk- 
ward walruses. Sometimes the dogs themselves 
help kill an angry bear; they are fearless creatures 
and their own teeth are terribly sharp and strong ! 
They are so tough and hardy they can endure a 
great amount of hard work and bitter cold, and 
so intelligent that they understand almost every 
word these men and boys say to them. 

Could you guess of what that tent is made? 
The poles are pieces of drift-wood found on the 
seashore close by, and the covering is made of 
sealskins sewed together by the women. The 
door looks as if it must have been a part of some 


IN CAMP IN GREENLAND 


137 


old boat; maybe it was a present from the master 
of a white man’s ship. They call such a man a 
kapitansoak — that means “ Great Captain.” Poles 
and planks and other large pieces of wood are 
very precious here, for these people need some 
material like wood for a great many different uses, 
but no trees grow to a large size so far north as 
this bare, rocky land where we are now. There 
are “ pussy willows ” to be found in a few places 
near here, but they grow on slender little stems 
like low bushes or delicate vines — not on trees. 

These children never in all their lives saw a 
real tree as tall as your front door at home! If 
you should try to tell them about great, tall trees 
with green-leafed branches thick overhead, they 
would not have any idea what you mean. Grass 
they see here for a few weeks every summer, fresh 
and green among these ledges; dandelions and 
poppies and other flowers blossom on the sunny 
slopes of those hills. Sometimes butterflies with 
lovely, fluttering wings go sailing through the air 
to alight on the flowers. The children know all 
those things; but trees? They would think you 
were making up a story out of your head! 

The stones laid around the edge of that tent 
hold the leather walls down tight to the ground 
so that the wind may not blow in. It is warm 
now, in summer; a thermometer might mark over 
50 degrees in this bright sunshine; but there will 
be some bleak, cold days before the deep snows 
come and the family move into winter quarters. 

Suppose these people should invite us to din- 


138 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

ner. As this is midsummer there would probably 
be fish to eat, or possibly a wild duck, shot with 
a stone-tipped arrow from a bow of tough whale- 
bone. It would be cooked over a fire of dried 
moss and grasses and scraps of drift-wood. They 
have no matches with which to start fires, but the 
mother would rub two pieces of dry wood to- 
gether till sparks flew, and then the sparks, falling 
on the dry moss, would grow into flames. It is 
no easy work to build a fire in that way and keep 
it burning well, when one has for fuel only the 
moss and little sticks that these children have 
gathered and brought home. An Esquimau girl 
is very proud when she is able to tend a fire as 
well as her mother does it. People up here do 
not say “ fire their word is ingyeng. 

Fish and ducks roasted over such a fire do taste 
good when one is living out of doors. No doubt 
the children will say A-tudo (“ more ”) when they 
have finished their share, and the dogs, too, will 
come crowding around, eager to pick the bones. 

You could never guess what strange things 
these children like to eat as you eat candy. The 
mother prepares it for them just as your mother 
sometimes make molasses candy or peppermint 
drops for you. She pulls the thin red skins off the 
legs of the wild birds that the men have shot, and 
fills them full of reindeer fat, so that they look 
like slender sticks of reddish candy. That baby 
in the funny leather trousers thinks there never 
was anything so nice as one of the long red things 
stuffed with tallow. He will suck it for a long 


IN CAMP IN GREENLAND 


139 


time and enjoy it as much as you enjoy the nicest 
caramels that ever came out of a Christmas stock- 
ing! 

As for Christmas, boys and girls here know 
nothing about it. Either they have no holidays, 
or else they have nothing but holidays — which- 
ever way you choose to put it. Nobody goes to 
school away up here in northern Greenland. 
These boys and girls have no school-books, no 
story-books, no pictures. Not one of this family 
ever learned to read or to write, and they have 
only a vague idea about other parts of the earth 
where people live in queer, big houses of wood 
and stone. Not one of them ever saw a staircase 
in his life, unless possibly they may have had a 
chance to go on board a white man’s ship. 

But they know a great deal about some other 
things. Even these children know all about how 
the great whales swim and feed, and how the 
mother seals take care of their furry babies, and 
how the wild ducks talk to each other, and how 
the auks choose their nesting places. How many 
boys in your school could throw a stone to hit a 
mark a hundred feet away? These boys practice 
for hours at a time, till they can hit a mark set up 
for the target. And that is not all. If a boy is 
to be able to cast spears at seals or fishes from a 
little light kayak (canoe) of whalebone and seal- 
skin without upsetting, he must be sure to throw 
his spear or stone without moving his body. How 
do you suppose he drills himself in keeping so 
still? He sits on the ground in a stony place like 


140 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


this, and gets one of the other children to pile 
small stones close around him, making a wall up 
as high as his waist. There he stays, all sur- 
rounded by the wall of loose stones, and practices 
shooting or throwing at the mark. Of course, if 
he moves his body much, the stones piled around 
him tumble down. Then another child piles them 
up again and he tries once more, doing it again 
and again, till he can keep quite still, just like a 
grown-up hunter. 

The father has taught these boys to make bows 
and arrows and they are learning to shoot. When 
they are a little older they will go out to hunt 
deer, but now, while they are small, they only play 
at hunting. Their bows are made of wood or of 
pieces of horn tightly spliced and wound with rein- 
deer sinews; their arrows are tipped with sharp 
stones or bits of bone. Sometimes boys take an 
old pair of deer antlers and set them on a stone, 
or in deep snow, and pretend the antlers are a 
live deer. They creep near, hiding behind rocks 
or snow-banks, and crawling on their stomachs 
so that the make-believe deer shall not see them, 
and, when an arrow really does hit the antlers, 
then the deer is supposed to be dead. Most likely 
this puppy is being taught by the boys how to 
drag a load home after the hunt, but puppies are 
a good deal alike the world over, and it will be a 
good while before he has sense enough to do any- 
thing but eat and run about and get in the way 
of people who have real work to do. 

Another thing the boys learn is how to find the 


IN CAMP IN GREENLAND 141 

nests of the wild ducks with their fresh-laid eggs, 
and how to make snares out of whalebone and 
reindeer sinews to catch other birds for dinner. 

And the girls? Yes, they have their work, too, 
learning to clean the skins of the animals and birds 
that are brought home, to tend the fires, to get 
the food ready, and to sew and mend and em- 
broider. The housework is simpler than any you 
have ever seen. There are almost no dishes to 
wash, for everybody eats with the fingers. There 
are no beds to make, for people sleep on mats of 
furs and skins, and these are simply shaken once 
in a while. As for dusting, what can you dust 
when there is no floor and no furniture — only 
some skins on the ground and a tent of sealskin 
overhead? And these Esquimau people do not 
feel troubled about washing; they do not own a 
single thing which can be washed (at least they 
did not until the white men came with the present 
of white men’s clothes). Everything they own in 
the way of clothing is made of some sort of fur, 
leather or bird-skin, and they wear it till it 
drops to pieces. Then it is time for a new gar- 
ment. 

In summer time there is no need of lamps here; 
do you know why? The fact is there are no nights 
in the north Greenland midsummer; for weeks 
at a time the sun stays above this horizon, never 
setting. It is daylight when these people get up in 
the morning and it is daylight when they go to 
bed. All through the weeks and weeks of your 
own long summer vacation it is broad daylight 


142 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


here, with the sun always in sight except on 
cloudy days. 

In winter — but that is another story. We will 
talk about that later. 

Perhaps you would be surprised to find these 
children playing with something like the “ bean- 
bags ” you have at home. The bags are made 
of sealskin and are filled with sand. Here in 
Greenland the way to play is by striking the bag 
with the flat palm of the hand, keeping the bag 
in the air all the time and not allowing it to fall 
to the ground. If a player does let it fall he is 
“ out.” 

The little Greenland girls like dolls as well as 
girls anywhere else. This mother knows how to 
make a fine doll-baby out of a roll of sealskin, with 
a dress made of a bit of soft fur. She has a few 
bone beads in her big pocket (they were made like 
the bracelet beads, by grinding bits of bone into 
round balls), and a couple of beads sewed on the 
head give dolly a pair of bright eyes. The doll’s 
mistress has to be very careful of her baby when 
the dogs are at home, for the sealskin body smells 
so good that puppy’s hungry nose would soon find 
it, and his sharp little teeth would soon pull it all 
to pieces. In order to keep it safe a little girl 
tucks her doll inside her own dress, and carries it 
there just as a grown-up mother carries a wee, 
live baby. 

Sometimes boys and girls together run races 
or play a Greenland kind of “ tag.” They know 
a number of funny ways to race and run. Some- 


IN CAMP IN GREENLAND 


M3 


times they play they are bears and run on “ all- 
fours,” using their hands as well as their feet. 
Sometimes they hold their legs close together, 
fold their arms and move in jumps. If that very 
little Esquimau falls and bumps his forehead on 
the ground, he cries with a funny sound like i-yi- 
yi-yi! Then the mother or the older children run 
to pick him up. But it is only the very, very lit- 
tle ones that ever cry. Living much out of doors 
in a wild open country like this makes both boys 
and girls brave and sensible, and teaches them to 
make little fuss over small hurts. 

By and by the summer will pass, and the sun 
will begin to set at night behind those hills just as 
it does where you live. It will rise later and later 
every morning, and set earlier and earlier every 
night, making the daytime very short. Then the 
grass will wither, and the wild birds will fly away 
to warmer, lighter places. And then there will be 
cold, gray days, when the snow falls thick and fast, 
burying all these rocks and ledges out of sight 
and covering all the land with deep drifts of white. 
The sea will freeze, too, so that no kayak can be 
paddled about in the waters, but the ice will be 
thick and strong so that these men and the dogs 
can walk almost anywhere over the frozen bays. 

Then the father will build a snow house. He 
will cut big, thick blocks of hard snow and pile 
them up into a wall, sprinkling them with water 
to make them freeze together. The boys will help 
him, and together they will make the snow wall 
higher and higher, and smaller and smaller at the 


144 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


top; finally a big block will close up the opening 
in the roof, and there will be a snow house with 
walls so thick that no cold wind could ever pass 
through. There will be one little doorway, so low 
that the father and mother and all the family will 
have to crawl in on hands and knees. Inside they 
will spread their nice warm furs and leather rugs, 
and it will be quite cosy and warm even in the 
bitterest cold of the long, cold winter. 

By the time the snow house is all ready, the 
days will have grown shorter, and before long the 
sun will hardly come up at all. By and by the sun 
will stay out of sight all the time. From about 
the time of our Thanksgiving Day until sometime 
in February, there will be no bright winter days 
at all, but only a long, long, long night without 
the least bit of daylight. The stars will shine 
bright in this sky when it is not stormy weather, 
and the children can watch for the moon and see 
it change its shape and size. The mother knows 
stories about the sun and the moon and the stars, 
and she has told them so many times that now 
the little girl knows them, too, and can tell them 
to the baby. 

One of the stories they like best is about how 
the sun is the moon’s sister. “ Listen,” the girl 
will say to that baby when the moon is new. And 
then she will tell him how the sun and moon have 
been playing together and how Sister Sun has 
rubbed black soot over Brother Moon’s face just 
for fun, running away afterwards. And the baby 
thinks it is all true. Something has darkened part 


IN CAMP IN GREENLAND 


145 


of the new moon’s face, and, as for the sun, that 
certainly does hide away somewhere all through 
the long, long winter ! 

Many of the stars that do shine at night in this 
sky are the same that you can see where you live. 
Do you know the group called the “ Great Dip- 
per ” or “Charles’s Wain”? These little folks 
know it, too, only they find it a little higher up 
in the sky than you do and they do not call it by 
those names. And do you know the “ North 
Star ” or “ Pole Star ” ? When these children 
look for it they find it almost directly overhead. 

The moonlight and the starlight cannot shine 
in through the small door of the winter snow- 
house, so part of the time the mother burns a 
lamp. The lamp is only a hollow saucer of stone, 
with lumps of whale-fat in the middle and a border 
of moss around the edge. The moss, when it is 
set on fire, acts like a lamp wick, soaking up the 
oil that comes out of the whale blubber. Some- 
times the extra blubber, instead of being put in 
the middle of the dish to melt, is hung over the 
burning lamp, and lets the oil fall drop by drop as 
fast as the blubber melts. 

It is well we have come visiting in summer, for 
a winter meal in the snow-house would hardly be 
so nice as the fish and duck’s eggs that make the 
warm weather meals. In the winter, when the 
seas are frozen and the birds have all flown south, 
there is not much variety in the food. Big pieces 
of salmon are always dried in summer and saved 
for cold weather, but the larger part of the time 


146 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


these little folks and their parents eat raw fat cut 
from the bodies of whales, walruses and seals. 
(They have no bread, for no grains grow here to 
make flour or meal.) The fat or blubber is very 
tough. A child holds the end of a strip in his 
teeth and cuts off the rest with a knife of sharp 
bone, keeping what his teeth held, and chewing 
it at his leisure. It is not exactly a dainty meal, 
but people who have had to live on blubber say 
it is not so bad as it might be when once one is 
used to it, especially if there is nothing else to be 
had! 

Sometimes, these boys will go out hunting 
seals with their father, when the winter sky is 
lighted only by twinkling stars. Sometimes the 
whole family will stay at home in the snow-house. 
The mother and the girls will sew. The father 
and the boys will make arrows ready for another 
year, or carve paddles for the kayak in preparation 
for returning light and warm weather. And that 
baby will play with the puppy, and roll around on 
the rugs, or curl up like a sleepy little bundle of 
furs, while he hears once more the story of the 
Sun and the Moon and how the Sun ran away to 
hide. 

If you could ask the children “ Do you like to 
live here ? ” you may be quite sure they would say 
Ah-py (“Yes”). Of course they like it, for it is 
their home, the only part of the earth they know. 
And if those white men over by the farther tents 
ask them to come away in a ship to live in your 
land and have a share in your own good times, 


IN CAMP IN GREENLAND 


147 


they would probably say Nag-ga (“ No ”) very de- 
cidedly. 

Only a few years ago a white man came away 
up here to travel about over the ice and snow, and 
to learn more about the land and the people. His 
wife came with him and they built a house of their 
own and lived not very far from here all through 
the long winter. While they were living here, a 
wee, white girl-baby of their own came to live with 
them, and her mother afterwards wrote a book 
about the baby’s queer experiences in this strange 
part of the world. The book is called “ The Snow 
Baby ” and the mother is Mrs. Peary, the brave 
wife of a very famous Arctic explorer. If ever 
you have a chance to read that book, be sure you 
do so; it tells all sorts of interesting things about 
what the people did and about the baby’s strange 
playmates. “ The Children of the Arctic ” is an- 
other book written by Mrs. Peary and the Snow 
Baby together. The father, Lieutenant Peary, has 
written a book about “ Snowland Folk,” which is 
also full of interesting stories. Still another book 
you will enjoy is “ The Children of the Cold.” 
That was written by a man named Frederick 
Schwatka, who knows all about Greenland boys 
and girls; he has traveled all over this queer land, 
and visited families just like these people you see 
here — yes, and eaten whale blubber for dinner! 


IN THE LAND OF THE CZAR 


If you have studied geography and read stories 
about Russia, you have heard of the city of St. 
Petersburg. Look on your map of Russia and 
you will find the city is far, far north, ever so much 
farther north than London or Paris or Berlin; it 
is on the river Neva, which flows into the Baltic 
Sea. The winters are very cold there, but in sum- 
mer time everything is green and blooming. 

The city buildings are much like those you have 
seen in other large cities. There are, of course, a 
great many shops and markets in St. Petersburg. 
There is one long street full of particularly fine 
shops where people like to go to buy their new 
clothes and furniture, books and pictures and jew- 
elry and all sorts of interesting things — they call 
it the Nevsky Prospekt. 

Suppose you have been walking down the Nev- 
sky Prospekt, looking at the gay shop-windows 
and the electric street-cars and the wagons and 
carriages and the passing people; then suppose 
you have turned off that street to a square on the 
south side where trees and flower-beds and wind- 
ing paths make a pleasant playground. Here you, 
are in the square. 


IN THE LAND OF THE CZAR 


149 


Position in Russia. Monument of Catherine II 
and Alexander Theatre , St. Petersburg 

As you stand here facing all these children, the 
long, busy street is off behind you. You are fac- 
ing almost directly south. Away off behind you 
and beyond this city, Lapland reaches toward the 
Arctic Ocean. At your left Russia extends thous- 
ands and thousands of miles, across Europe and 
Asia. At your right, about one thousand miles 
away, is the place in Norway where you saw the 
country children and the waterfall. 

Are you wondering about the woman with the 
queer embroidered head-dress? She is a baby’s 
nurse — almost all nurses here in St. Petersburg 
dress like this in summer time, and they look very 
fine indeed. The embroidery on that cap is of 
gold and silver, and it has long ribbons hanging 
down behind. The baby thinks it great fun to pull 
those strings of beads around her neck and when 
he does it she tells him in Russian to let them 
alone and be good. Do you see the baby? I do. 
He was afraid when he saw so many people all 
around him and began to cry, so one of the little 
girls said she would walk about with him and 
keep him quiet. There she is now, over nearer 
the monument, between us and the tall lamp-post. 

Two of the girls standing here must be sisters, 
for their dresses and capes are alike and their hats 
are almost alike. Do you suppose they can be 
twins, or does one look older than the other? 
Have you noticed the girl who wears a kerchief 


150 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

over her head in place of a hat? A great many 
women and little girls dress that way, here in Rus- 
sia. Do you see another girl with a shy little boy 
beside her? Very likely they may be sister and 
brother; she herself must be shy else she would 
not put her hand up to her mouth while we are 
looking at her. The little fellow’s cap is different 
from those of the other boys in sight. Almost all 
the St. Petersburg boys wear caps with flat tops 
and visors in front. They usually wear belted 
blouses, too, like that of the tall lad at the left. 

The gardener seems to be watching us. See he 
has been bending over the flower-bed, doing some- 
thing to the plants; that long heavy apron is to 
keep his trousers clean when he kneels on the 
ground, attending to his work. 

This is what one of these girls might say, in 
Russian, when she met one of her schoolmates 
here in the park : Dpbroe utro, moya dorogaya 
(“ Good-morning, my dear ”). 

If she wished to ask “ Where are you going?” 
she would inquire: Kuda ty idiosh ? 

And very likely the other girl might reply: Ya 
idu domoi (“ I am going home ”). 

All these boys and girls, except perhaps the lit- 
tle fellow behind the nurse, go to school and 
know at least how to read and write. If their 
people can afford it, they will go through all the 
grades of the lower schools, studying arithmetic, 
too, and grammar and geography, and then go to 
a high school to study history and mathematics 
and sciences and foreign languages. Russians are 


IN THE LAND OF THE CZAR 1 51 

particularly good at languages and learn quite 
readily to speak French and German and English. 
Those who are most ambitious and most ready to 
work hard may go to the University after they 
have finished the work of the high schools, and 
study to become doctors and lawyers, civil en- 
gineers and chemists, or in some other way speci- 
ally useful to the world. They are bright, eager, 
young folks, these Russian boys and girls, and 
they hear a great deal of talk among their elders 
about how much their country needs faithful, 
hard-working men and women with educated 
minds, to help make things better for all the 
others. There is a great deal of poverty and 
misery now in some parts of the country, though 
you would not think so while you see only this 
pleasant square in front of the splendid theatre. 

Children play here in St. Petersburg many of 
the same games that are played in America and in 
England. In winter they have great fun skating 
on the frozen river and the canals and ponds — 
everybody skates here, even the dignified grown- 
up people. The little folks have sleds, too, and 
go coasting down such hills as they can find — 
there are not many natural hills, here in the city, 
but sometimes artificial hills are built of planks 
and covered with snow on purpose for sliding. 

Sometimes the winter weather here is very, very 
cold. Snow lies deep over these garden beds, and 
anybody who stood loitering by this fountain 
might find his nose freezing! People who have 
ever been in Minnesota or Dakota in mid-winter 


152 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

would know what to do — they have the same rem- 
edy here. The best plan is to snatch a handful of 
snow from one of the drifts near by and rub the 
nose as hard as one can. Then the blood inside 
goes hurrying about its business and warms the 
face so that no great harm occurs. 

But it does hurt! 

At almost any time of year St. Petersburg boys 
are fond of wrestling. The girls love to dance, 
and both boys and girls learn to sing. There are 
beautiful songs written by Russians which these 
children know as well as you know “ America/’ 

If the policeman will allow it, the girls like to 
play games in this park. One favorite for the 
little ones is like our game where different trades 
are acted by making motions. For instance, 
while they sing (in Russian), 

“ When I was a carpenter. 

And a carpenter was I, 

This way and that way 
And this way went I,” 

they make motions as if they were hammering 
nails. If the verse is 

“ When I was a soldier 
And a soldier was I, 

This way and that way 
And this way went I,” 

they pretend to shoulder guns or to stand very 
stiff and straight, giving the military salute to a 
make-believe officer. Most of these boys will 
really and truly be soldiers by and by, for a few 
years if not always. The law requires them to 


IN THE LAND OF THE CZAR 153 

serve in the army if they are called upon, and 
every year a large number of grown-up young 
men do have their names drawn by lot, and they 
go off into camp and are drilled ready for the wars. 

Another game, which is very good fun because 
it gives a chance to run, is all about an old witch 
and a mother hen with a flock of chickens. The 
mother hen has the chickens beside her and says 
to the witch : 

“What time is it, old witch?” 

“ Ten o’clock.” 

“ What are you doing, old witch ? ” 

“ Building a fire to cook a chicken.” 

“ Where will you get the chicken ? ” 

“ Out of your flock ! ” and the witch makes a 
dash at some “ chicken ” who seems easy to cap- 
ture. But every “ chicken ” has really been watch- 
ing sharply to see which one the witch is going 
to catch, and, when she makes up her mind, she 
finds the chicken has wings. Then there is a 
scampering, as you can imagine; and, after the 
first chicken is caught, the witch has to capture 
all the rest of the flock in the same way, one after 
another. 

If they forget where they are and run across 
these garden beds, that gardener will certainly 
make trouble for them. The running game will 
have to be stopped; then they may perhaps sit on 
the steps of that tall monument and tell stories 
and riddles. They know quantities of delightful 
fairy stories; some are in printed books which 
they have had given them for Christmas and birth- 


154 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


day presents; some are not printed at all, but are 
told by grandmothers and by nurses like this big 
woman with the apron and the parasol. 

If this nurse came from the country (probably 
she did), she knows ever so many stories about 
domovoys or house-fairies. A good many country 
people believe that each house has a queer little 
fairy living in it — a funny mite who looks like a 
wee old man in a red shirt. In the daytime he 
hides somewhere behind the kitchen stove, so that 
you almost never can catch a glimpse of him; he 
comes out only at night when all the family are 
asleep. He is a good sort of fairy, keeping on 
the watch for fires or robbers; the only mischief 
he does is going to the stable and taking out the 
horses to ride on their backs, galloping around in 
the dark. The horses do not like that, for it 
breaks into their sleep and makes them tired for 
the next day, but the people in the house do not 
wish to interfere and offend the domovoy, so they 
make no objection; indeed, they take pains to leave 
some supper for him in the kitchen every night 
before they go to bed ! 

If the girls were to sit on those steps and tell 
riddles, very likely these would be some of their 
favorites — see if you can guess them. (If you can- 
not, you may look for the answers at the end of 
this chapter, but you would better try first.) 

I. “ There is a beautiful writing on blue velvet, 
and to read that writing is given to no one — not 
to priests nor to deacons, nor to wise moujiks.” 
(A moujik is a farmer or a workman). 


IN THE LAND OF THE CZAR 


155 


2. “What is brighter than the light? 

What is thicker than the forest? 

What is there that’s never silent ? ” 

3. “ There are three brothers. The first eats, 
but never is satisfied. The second drinks and has 
never enough. The third plays and dances and 
is never weary.” 

If one of these girls should be going through 
this square at sunset and should see the new moon 
over the trees, she would very likely say “ Young 
moon, God give thee strong horns and me good 
health.” Some people here think it brings good 
luck to say that when they see the new moon, and 
those who know it has nothing to do with “ luck ” 
say it just for fun. 

When these young folks go home to dinner 
they are likely to have some things that you would 
think very strange. Very often they have fish 
soup; sometimes it is cabbage soup with barley 
in it. Now and then they have a soup made with 
beer and herring and cucumbers. You might not 
like that, because it is so different from the things 
you have at home, but they consider it very nice 
when they come running in from school, as hun- 
gry as can be. Mutton and chickens and eggs are 
cooked in Russian kitchens in about the same 
ways as in ours. There are sometimes pies made 
of fish and raisins and those are quite delicious. 
In every home they drink a great deal of tea — 
everybody drinks tea here; it is not very strong 
but it is usually very hot, and they never put milk 
or cream into a cup of tea — a Russian child would 


156 REAL 'CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

think that very disagreeable. What they like in it 
is a lump of sugar and a slice of lemon. Very 
likely you too have seen tea served in that way, 
for people in our own country have lately learned 
to like this Russian fashion. 

Here in St. Petersburg, and indeed all through 
Russia, people are very fond of hot baths. Some- 
times the bath-rooms are small, separate buildings 
beside the house; sometimes people go to large 
public bath-houses and pay for the bath. A part 
of the time the bath-room is made very, very hot 
and damp so that it is full of steam; then the per- 
son is doused with cold water and rubbed till he is 
all glowing warm again. Sometimes a stranger 
does not like the custom the first time he tries it, 
but, when he becomes used to it, he finds a Rus- 
sian bath keeps him delightfully clean and makes 
him feel strong and well and alive to the very ends 
of his fingers and toes. 

Some of the best times for these little Russians 
come at Christmas and Easter, when presents are 
given and there are special holidays. A week be- 
fore Easter people give each other twigs of willow 
and children like to plant theirs and make them 
grow. There is a special wish that goes with the 
gift of a pussy-willow twig ; it is “ Be tall like the 
willow, and healthy like the water, and rich like 
the soil.” Sometimes the planted twigs do take 
root and grow into trees — there are some beauti- 
ful willow trees in a park not far from St. Peters- 
burg, which were planted many years ago by a 
little daughter of the Czar of those times. It was 


IN THE LAND OF THE CZAR 


157 


a long while ago, and since then the little Grand 
Duchess (that is what they called her) has grown 
up and married an English prince and has children 
of her own. 

Do you know that Easter and Christmas here 
do not come at exactly the same time as our 
Easter and Christmas? Here in Russia the year is 
divided into months and weeks just like ours, but 
every date comes nearly a fortnight later than 
ours; that is the way the Russians prefer to reckon 
dates. It is just as if one were to keep his clock 
a little slower than other people’s clocks. If you 
were to spend a Christmas in England, you would 
have plenty of time to come over here to St. 
Petersburg and have a second Christmas with 
these boys and girls, at a time when English and 
American calendars call it the first week in Janu- 
ary! 

When the boys and girls go to church here in 
St. Petersburg they kneel or stand all through 
the long service — everybody does so, even the 
Czar himself. The men and boys stay at one side 
of the church and girls at the other side. It would 
not be good manners for a girl to stand beside 
her brother, unless, indeed, he were a very little 
brother and she had to take care of him. There 
are no organs or other musical instruments in the 
churches, but the singing — always done by men 
and boys — is very beautiful, for the singers have 
fine voices and they are usually well trained. 

Have you looked at the tall monument in the 
middle of the park? See how queenly and dig- 


158 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

nified the woman’s figure is, away up on the top 
of the high pedestal; it is the statue of the Em- 
press Catherine the Great who many years ago 
ruled all Russia as the Czar does now. The seated 
figures below her feet represent great men who 
lived and worked in the days of Empress Cath- 
erine ; some were famous scholars ; some were sol- 
uiers; some were poets, artists and musicians. 
The Empress herself was a wonderful woman. 
She had studied a great deal — indeed far more 
than most men in the times when she lived. She 
was interested in books and pictures and beautiful 
statuary, and she particularly liked to talk with 
artists and poets and statesmen, all sorts of wise 
men who came here to St. Petersburg. She used 
to ride on horseback, too, when her soldiers were 
called out to form some grand procession, and 
everybody was very proud of her queenly air at 
the head of her regiment. To amuse herself she 
wrote plays. Some of them have been acted in 
that very theatre which you see at the farther side 
of the square — the large, stone building with the 
tall columns in front. 

People here are very fond of seeing plays and 
especially of listening to music. Young people 
who have fine voices or who have talent for play- 
ing some musical instrument study and practice 
for years in order to be able to please an audience 
in a large theatre like this. Possibly some of 
these very girls and boys may be planning to do 
that by and by when they are older — who knows ? 
Some of the most beautiful music in the world has 


IN THE LAND OF THE CZAR 


1 59 


been written by Russians either here in St. Peters- 
burg or in other cities in other parts of the land. 
One bit of old Russian music some of you have 
heard many times where you live at home, though 
perhaps you did not know it was Russian. It is 
often used for singing English words. This is the 
way it goes: — 



( The sun. ( Fire. 

I. The stars at night. 2. } The stars. 3. -j Earth. 

( The sea. ( Water. 



AT GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE IN 
TURKEY 


Probably you know where to find Palestine on 
the map, away out at the eastern end of the Medi- 
terranean Sea. Make sure by looking for it. It 
is in the Asiatic part of Turkey. If you were to 
make a journey to Palestine you would go by 
steamer to Jaffa on the shore of the Mediterra- 
nean, and travel through the country on horse- 
back or perhaps on the back of a donkey, or a tall 
hump-backed camel. There is a short railroad 
line running from Jaffa up to Jerusalem, but that 
is considered a great curiosity in this country. 
The Turkish rulers of the land are not interested 
in new ideas nor in new ways of doing things, so 
affairs in most of the towns are carried on just the 
same as they were hundreds of years ago, before 
there was such a thing as a railroad train or a 
telephone in the whole world. 

The grandmother, whose house we are to visit, 
lives in a town called Beeroth, four miles from 
Jerusalem, on the road between Jerusalem and 
Nazareth. 

The houses in Beeroth are built of stone and 
most of them have but one story. Many of the 
houses have a small square courtyard (a space 
without any roof) in the middle of the house, or 


AT GRANDMOTHER'S HOUSE IN TURKEY l6l 

behind the house, with a high wall all around it. 
If the people were rich, they would have flowers 
growing in the court and make it the prettiest 
part of the home, but the Beeroth people have 
not enough money for that. Suppose to-day we 
make a morning call at one of the houses and 
look on while the friendly grandmother is doing 
part of the housework. We shall find her husband 
talking with her and two grandchildren having a 
fine time, as children usually do when they are 
staying at grandmother’s house. 


Position in Turkey. Churning butter in a goat - 
skin, Beeroth , Palestine 

We are in the little courtyard, with high walls 
all around us, but the open sky overhead. That 
doorway at the left leads into the house itself. 
See; the grandfather has sat down beside the 
churn. The abu (father) and the umm (mother) 
are probably out working in the fields, and when 
it is noon that girl will carry them some dinner. 
When she is a little older she will work with them. 
The grandmother used to go out in the barley 
fields years ago, but now she has for her share the 
easier work here in the house. 

Isn’t it a strange way to make butter? That 
queer leather bag, tied tight at the corners, was 
once the skin of a frisky goat. Grandmother has 
filled it with cream like what you see in the big 
bowl, pouring the cream in through an opening 
in the leather bottle; then she tied the opening 


ii 


162 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


tightly with a string so that the cream should not 
spill, and now she is shaking the skin back and 
forth, so as to throw the cream first to this side 
and then to the other. Back and forth, and back 
and forth, and back and forth that goatskin will 
swing, till the cream has been so shaken up that it 
has separated into two parts — butter and thin, 
watery “ buttermilk.” When it is all done she will 
untie the bag or “ churn,” take the butter out into 
an earthen dish and pour the buttermilk off into 
a jar like the one from which the girl has been 
drinking. Very likely there is buttermilk now in 
the jar she has in her brown hands. 

I wonder what the baby brother is eating. Can 
you tell? It looks like a ripe fig. If it is a fig, it 
is not like the figs you have eaten where you live 
at home, all golden brown and sugary. Our figs 
were dried before being packed in boxes and bas- 
kets to come over sea. This fig is just as it came 
off some tree near by — soft and dark-colored and 
juicy — you probably would not like it, but the 
baby thinks it quite the nicest thing he knows. 

That big jar on the shelf in the wall was made 
to hold beans, peas or barley. Grandmother cooks 
beans and peas for dinner by boiling them in a pot 
of water. There is no cooking stove in the house 
and not even a chimney. The kitchen fire is built 
on a flat stone, and the smoke goes out as well as 
it can through the window and the open door. 
Rice and mutton are often boiled together over 
such a fire. These children eat it sitting on a mat 
upon the floor; a piece of bread sometimes serves 


AT GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE IN TURKEY 1 63 

as a plate, and when the rice and meat have been 
eaten, using the fingers for forks, the plates are 
eaten, too ! If there is soup for dinner the family 
use small bowls of earthen ware, somewhat like 
this big one on the floor that holds the milk. It 
is a coarse, rough ware, a little like the flower- 
pots you have seen at home. 

When grandmother makes bread, she has first 
to get the flour ready. There are no shops here 
where people can buy wheat flour in barrels or 
sacks. She makes the flour herself by crushing 
grains of barley between two big, flat stones, and 
grinding them into coarse powder. Then she 
mixes the barley flour with goat’s milk or water 
and carries it down the street to be baked in the 
village oven. The oven is a sort of stone cup- 
board, built out of doors, beside the road, where 
it will be convenient for a good many women; all 
the housekeepers in the village take turns using it. 
A hot fire is built inside the oven and kept burning 
till all the inner surface of stone is very hot in- 
deed; then the hot coals are raked out and the 
dough, made into flat cakes, is laid in on the hot 
stones. When the bread is taken out, it is rather 
hard and tough, but it tastes delicious to a hungry 
child just home from school. 

Yes, it happens that this girl does go to school, 
though not many Palestine girls have such a 
chance. The Christians and the Jews here in 
Palestine like to have their daughters learn to 
read and write, but most of the people think dif- 
ferently about it. Most Palestine people are Mo- 


164 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


hammedans and they provide schools only for the 
boys. 

This is a Christian family, and the bright-eyed 
girl in the doorway has been to a mission school. 
The lessons are not so many nor so hard as yours. 
She has never done much work in arithmetic, and 
she has very little idea of other countries outside 
Palestine, but she can read, and she sews very, 
well. It will be a great help to the family when 
she can earn money by her sewing and embroid- 
ery; even now she can make a cotton dress like 
the one she is wearing, with just a little help, and 
grandmother finds 'her handy about the house- 
work. She can sweep the stone floor as well as 
any housekeeper in Beeroth. There are no beds, 
but she shakes the rugs on which they sleep, and 
makes things as tidy as she can. There are only 
a few dishes to be washed and no books nor pic- 
tures to be dusted, so the housekeeping is very 
simple. 

Do you notice the string of gay coins that she 
wears across her forehead ? She is proud of them, 
just as an American schoolgirl might be proud of 
pretty hair-ribbons. All the girls here in Beeroth 
who can afford it wear such a jingling band over 
the forehead. 

The place where she is sure to meet her girl 
friends, and stop to talk and laugh with them, is 
at the village well where she goes for water. A 
good deal of water has to be used in any house; 
just think how much you use in your house at 
home, for drinking and cooking, for bathing and 


AT GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE IN TURKEY 1 65 


washing and cleaning. But you can draw the 
water from faucets or pumps in your home. Here 
in Beeroth people have to fill their jars and pitchers 
at one well, away off down the street, and bring it 
back to the house. That jar leaning against the 
doorstep at the girl’s feet is one she has often 
filled with water at the well and brought home to 
grandmother. 

Do the handles on the jars seem rather small 
for carrying such a quantity of water? That is 
so; but the girls and women use the handles only 
for lifting a jar. When it is full of water the girl 
will bring it home on her head, holding it steady 
by the handle if she is not quite sure she can bal- 
ance it safely. Many a time she has brought a jar 
of water all the way from the well without once 
holding the handles at all ! (It is good fun to try 
doing something of the sort yourself; but the 
chances are that at first you will drop whatever 
you try to carry, so don’t begin with a pitcher of 
water. Try a brick or a flat book at first and then 
a strapped bundle of books.) 

That cloth over the grandmother’s head is some- 
thing she always wears. When she goes out on 
the street she lets part of it fall over her face like 
a heavy veil. In this part of the world it is not 
good manners for a grown-up woman to go out of 
doors without something to cover her face. Prob- 
ably the girl will begin to wear such a veil by the 
time she is twelve or thirteen years old. It is a 
great bother to wear it, but, all the same, girls 
here feel very grand and grown-up when they are 


i66 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


first allowed to put it on, just as the girls whom 
you know like to begin to do up their hair. 

Have you noticed the cloth turban that the 
grandfather wears on his own head instead of a 
hat? His long robe or frock is quite different 
from the coat your grandfather wears. He is a 
handsome, dignified old man and looks quite wise. 
He does not know much English, but, if you could 
talk with him in Arabic, you would find he knows 
all sorts of interesting stories about the land 
around here and the people who used to live in 
Palestine. 

Do you know that this home where you are 
now is in the very same country where the people 
of the Old Testament stories lived in Bible times? 
It is so. Maybe Abraham himself was the great- 
great-many-times-great grandfather of this old 
man here. It was in a stone house somewhat like 
this one that Jesus Christ lived when He was a 
boy. The town where He lived (Nazareth) is only 
sixty miles away from here. 

What place do you know which is about sixty 
miles from where you live ? Nazareth is the same 
distance from here, but it would take longer to 
make the journey here in Palestine because you 
remember there are no railroads in this part of 
the country and no electric cars. 

Some people say it was at this village of Bee- 
roth, on their way home to Nazareth from Jeru- 
salem, that Joseph and Mary first missed the boy 
Jesus at the time when they were so anxious about 
Him. The Bible story tells how they went away 


AT GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE IN TURKEY 1 67 

back to Jerusalem looking for Him, and found 
Him in the great Temple talking with the wise 
priests and doctors. 

That little fellow eating the fig is hardly old 
enough yet to pay attention to grandfather’s 
stories about old times. The sister takes care of 
him just as a nice big sister always does, and often 
takes him out in the fields to pick flowers and to 
chase the gay butterflies. When he was very lit- 
tle — even smaller than he is now — she used to 
play pat-a-cake with him, and sing a song that 
goes : — 

“ Blacksmith, blacksmith, shoe the mare ; 

Shoe the colt with greatest care. 

Hold the shoe and drive the nail. 

Else your labor all will fail. 

Shoe a donkey for Selim, 

And a colt for Ibrahim.” 

Sometimes the sister plays “ jack-stones,” tossing 
little pebbles up in the air and catching them on 
the back of her hand. The baby likes to watch 
her, but he cannot do it himself. Those fat little 
hands of his are not yet clever enough to catch 
the stones as they fall. 

When this little brother is a bit larger and older 
he will play see-saw with other boys in the village, 
and will spin wooden tops and play marbles, too, 
using nuts instead of round balls of stone. The 
bigger Beeroth boys play ball and leap-frog. 
Girls like “ Blindman’s-buff ” and “ Hop-scotch,” 
and they have dolls that they love dearly, though 
you might not think them very pretty. This girl 


i68 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


knows how to play “ button, button, who’s got 
the button”; — generally a little flat stone is used 
and passed from hand to hand while the players 
guess which girl holds it. 

Of course you have played “ puss-in-the-corner,” 
where you live at home. The children in this 
village play the same game, only they do not call 
it by that name. The girl who is “ It ” says to 
one of the other girls, “ Give me a piece of wood 
to mend my fire.” The other girl says “ Go ask 
my neighbor.” Then the one who is “ It ” says 
to the next girl “ Give me a piece of wood to 
mend my fire,” and that girl also says “ Go ask 
my neighbor.” It is while she is busy going from 
one to another begging for wood that the children 
seize the chance to exchange corners, running 
behind her back. If she does see a corner vacant 
she runs to take it for herself, and the girl who is 
left without a corner has to be “ It.” 

Probably this girl will teach the little brother 
a good many things before he is big enough to go 
to school. These are the names of the days of the 
week, as children learn them here in Beeroth: — 

Sunday — el-ahad 
Monday — el-itnen 
T uesday — el-telata 
Wednesday — el arba’a 
Thursday — el khamis 
Friday — el jum’ a 
Saturday — es-sebt. 

You may be sure this girl with the jar is bright 
and fond of fun. Just see how her dark eyes 


AT GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE IN TURKEY 169 

shine. And although she does go about barefoot, 
she has been taught beautiful manners; — indeed, 
in this place it is most polite to take off your shoes 
when you go inside a house. If a friend comes to 
see you where you live, on a hot and dusty sum- 
mer day, you naturally find a fan for her and offer 
her a glass of fresh, cold water. This girl would 
think it still nicer and more hospitable to bring a 
bowl of water so that the guest might bathe her 
dusty feet. And remember she has to bring the 
water all the way from the village well in a jar 
upon her head! 

Just as soon as the baby is big enough to talk 
plainly, the sitt (that means grandmother) will 
teach him also to bow and to say Kayf hal Kum , 
Effendum (“ How do you do, sir ”). When the 
visitor goes away, it is polite for the little one to 
say Ma’as salamyeh , Effendum (“ Fare you well, 
sir ”). Sometimes, when he should be especially 
polite, he will have to say long Arabic words that 
mean, “Good evening, noble sir, blessed with good 
luck. May Heaven be praised for the sunshine of 
thy honorable visit.” The grandfather might per- 
haps say Allah yesellimak (“ May God grant things 
shall go well with you ”). 

When it is time to go to bed, both the brother 
and the sister have pretty good-byes for their 
parents and the older people — Allah yemesik bil 
IMr (“ May Heaven give you a happy night ”). 
The polite reply to that wish is LHtak sdideh 
mubdrekeh (“ The same to you ”). 

But there are no nice bedsteads here with white 


170 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


sheets and clean, soft pillows, such as you have in 
the bedrooms at your house. These children do 
not take off many of their clothes. They just un- 
roll some thick rugs and spread them on the floor; 
then they lie down on the rugs. Maybe for a few 
moments they think they would like to stay awake 
to plan some fun for the next day, but sleepiness 
creeps into their eyes before they know it. The 
walls of their little room somehow begin to fade 
before their half-shut eyes like pencil-marks al- 
most rubbed out. The voices of the older people 
grow dim; the things they are saying fade out, 
fainter and fainter to drowsy ears. And by and 
by the room and the older people’s talk, every- 
thing around them seems to melt into a soft, dark, 
sleepy feeling — and — and — and that is all they 
know about it — till the sun once more shines 
bright on the stone walls of this court, as if to 
say Allah yesabbihak bil khtr (“God grant thee a 
good morning ”) ! 


PLAYING HOP-SCOTCH IN INDIA 
AT THE OTHER SIDE OF 
THE WORLD 

You will need your map of Asia in order to 
find the part of India which you are about to visit. 
Look at the northernmost part of India and see 
how many mountains stand there. If you look 
very sharply indeed, you will see that a river be- 
gins away up there among the mountains and 
flows southwest until it joins the Indus. 

Beside that river, over on the northern side of 
the Himalaya mountains, is the Valley of Cash- 
mere, and in the valley is a city called Srinigar. 
The place to which you are going is in Srinigar, 
on a street near that very river which you find 
printed on your map. 

Position in India . Children are children the wide 
world around — little folks playing Hop-Scotch 
in Cashmere 

Did you ever play hop-scotch, standing on one 
foot and kicking a pebble from one space to an- 
other marked out on the ground? Then you 
understand at once what this boy is doing. 

How many children are there? All are boys 
except one. Her clothes are much like the boys’ 
clothes, but her hair has not been cut and she 


172 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


wears bracelets on her little brown arms; do you 
find her? She likes playing with dolls better than 
hopping about on one foot, for girls here are not 
encouraged to play many lively games, but it is 
fun to watch the big boys. 

Some of these children live in the house with 
the little square windows and the others are 
friends come to play with them. If you wanted 
to enter the house you would go through that 
narrow passage to the little yard where the rugs 
and clothing are hung to air, and enter by a door 
at the rear, but there is not much to see inside. 
The floor is of dirt like the street here, worn down 
smooth and hard. There are no chairs, for when 
people sit down they squat on the ground just as 
they are doing now. There is not a bedstead nor 
a bureau about the place ; the family sleep on rugs 
spread upon the floor, and their best clothes are 
kept in a chest or a bag. 

The roof is covered with straw and dirt, and 
grass and flowers grow over it. You can see how 
slender tree branches have been fastened around 
it like a fence, to bind it safely in place and keep 
it from sliding off. Notice that odd little window 
where somebody is watching the game. The wall 
around the windows is of stone plastered over 
with mud which hardens in drying, but you can 
see for yourself that there is a framework of wood 
besides. 

Of course there are children here in Srinigar 
who live in finer houses and who wear better 
clothes, yet these boys and girls are not very poor. 


PLAYING HOP-SCOTCH IN INDIA 


173 


They have enough to eat and enough to wear, and 
they are so used to their own ways of living that 
they never think of finding fault. When dinner 
is ready in that house with the little window, it 
will be chiefly rice, boiled by the mother in a brass 
pot over an open fire. Maybe there will be eggs, 
too, for a good many of the families along this 
street keep hens in the little courtyards behind 
the houses; on special holidays there is sometimes 
a feast of boiled chicken. Each boy will have his 
food in a little earthen bowl, and sit down on the 
floor to eat it. 

Look at the children’s heads and see whether 
their tight little skullcaps are exactly alike. Un- 
derneath those caps every boy has his hair shaven 
as closely as any American lad’s in midsummer. 
Every boy had his baby hair all cut off before he 
was three years old, and the hair was buried under 
some tree; only the little girl’s dark locks have 
been allowed to grow. 

How many of the boys do you think are more 
than seven or eight years old? Those older ones 
have probably been “ confirmed ” by the priest at 
their Hindu temple and made what the people 
call “ twice born.” The priest recites prayers be- 
fore the altar and ties loosely about the boy’s body 
a cord which he will always wear and guard from 
any accident. It is worn now under the clothes, 
passing over the left shoulder and under the right 
arm. The little ones of the family are glad when 
a brother grows big enough to wear the “ sacred 
cord,” because the day when it is first put on is 


174 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


celebrated like a birthday with presents and frolics 
and particularly good things to eat — candied gin- 
ger and fruits and little cakes full of caraway 
seeds. The ceremony is only for boys — little girls 
do not wear the cord; but the good times are for 
all alike. 

The religion of the people here is very different 
from ours. A great many missionaries are sent 
to different parts of India from England and 
America to tell them about the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ. 

Many of these little folks have been to school 
and learned to read the strange marks that peo- 
ple in this country make for certain sounds and 
words. They do not use the same letters that we 
use. If you were to show one of your school books 
to that tallest boy he would think the printed 
pages very queer and dull, just little black marks 
dotted over a piece of paper. He might like the 
pictures, but even those would show things all very 
new and strange to him. He and some of the 
other boys have learned enough arithmetic to 
count and to reckon money. The copper coins 
that they know best are the anna, which is 
worth about two cents, the half anna (one cent) 
and the pice, which is only half a cent; besides, 
there are silver pieces worth four, eight, and 
sixteen cents. To have a whole silver rupee 
(thirty-two cents) is to be quite fine, for a rupee 
will buy quantities of ripe apples, pears and peaches 
at the market, or candy and sweet cakes enough 
to treat all the boys in this part of the town, 


PLAYING HOP-SCOTCH IN INDIA 


175 


There are several ways in which they earn 
money. Some go out into the pastures to watch 
flocks of sheep. Some work with their fathers and 
older brothers, learning how to weave shawls and 
carpets. A few may, perhaps, help take care of 
the horses and elephants of the Maharajah of 
Cashmere, an Indian prince who lives near here 
in a fine palace with troops of servants. That is 
great fun, for there never was a live boy who did 
not like horses and elephants. 

Do you remember that, when you were in King 
Edward’s garden in London, you saw an Indian 
prince in magnificent clothes, standing near the 
little Princess Victoria? This country of Cash- 
mere, where you are now, is a part of the vast 
empire of India ruled by the British monarch. 
Sometime the people living on this very street 
will have the English Prince Edward for their 
emperor ! 

These Srinigar boys do not expect to be very 
great or grand. They are very well contented 
just as they are. Some of them will learn to be 
gardeners and raise peas and beans, melons and 
vegetables of various sorts; but you never saw 
gardens so strange as there are here in Srinigar 
— actually floating on the water of the river like 
movable islands. The men who own them make 
rafts of tough grasses and lay earth upon the 
rafts; vegetables grow finely on such rafts, and 
a gardener can move his garden when he 
pleases. 

See this round-faced mite of a boy playing with 


176 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

the stones and dirt. (He has moved his plump fist, 
sifting dust through his fingers — that is why his 
hand looks blurred.) I wonder what kind of work 
he will do when he grows bigger. His father and 
mother tried to find out when he was a wee baby 
just beginning to take notice of things; they set 
him on the floor and laid a number of different 
objects around him to see which he would choose. 
They believed that if he chose an apple or a heap 
of rice he would be a farmer; if he chose a pen he 
would be a student; if he reached out first toward 
a piece of cloth he would be a weaver; if he chose 
one of his mother’s bracelets he would be a silver- 
smith; if he reached out to a guitar he might be a 
musician; if he chose a bullet he would be a sol- 
dier, and so on. It would be interesting to know 
what kind of thing he did choose, although I do 
not suppose that will actually have anything to 
do with his real fortunes. 

By the way, you have already seen some Indian 
soldiers. Do you remember where they were? 
Parading in Buckingham Palace Garden before 
His Majesty King Edward and the royal family. 
Those particular soldiers came from another part 
of India, however. Your map will show you that 
India is a tremendously large country — it is more 
than twenty times as large as England itself, in 
fact almost as large as the whole United States 
of America. 

In many parts of India there are beautiful, large 
cities. In other regions of the country people live 
in poor, scattered villages. So children brought 


PLAYING HOP-SCOTCH IN INDIA 177 

up in different districts may live in ways very dif- 
ferent from each other. 

The bigger boys here all seem interested in that 
game. Perhaps the boy whose turn it is may be 
a particularly good player and they like to watch 
him. Sometimes boys here quarrel over their 
games just as boys do everywhere till they learn 
to hold on to their own tempers as a man holds on 
to fractious horses. If one of these friends should 
do anything unfair in the game, do you know what 
the others would do? They would take up hand- 
fuls of dirt and throw them — not at the other boy, 
but down on the ground; that means “ Your ac- 
tions are as low-down and contemptible as the dirt 
underfoot ! ” And usually the boy who was in the 
wrong is ashamed of himself. 

There are plenty of holidays in Srinigar, and 
special good times come with each one. There 
is a spring festival when everybody makes pres- 
ents of rice to the men who fish in the river near 
here and the fishermen make return gifts of fish 
that are cooked for supper. The Maharajah or 
Prince of Cashmere often has visitors coming to 
see him and all the boys in town gather on the 
streets to look at gay parades of people gor- 
geously dressed in silks and velvets, with turbans 
on their heads and glittering jewelled necklaces on 
their breasts. (You remember how splendid the 
Indian was over in London.) If the visitors are 
very grand indeed, cannon are fired in their honor. 
The Maharajah has beautiful boats on the river 
in which he and his guests go out, with a dozen 


12 


178 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

men to row them swiftly up and down the wind- 
ing stream. A good many English people come 
here in summer time because this place is not so 
hot as other parts of India, and it is fun for these 
boys to watch the strangers. They think the 
clothes and the talk of English children very 
funny. 

In winter it is often quite cold here, for this 
house and the others in the neighborhood have 
no such things as stoves. You could never guess 
how these children keep comfortable during the 
coldest weather. The mother fills little earthen 
pots with fiery coals and hot ashes from the cook- 
ing-fire and the children tuck the little pots inside 
their loose clothes, just as one might have a hot- 
water bottle tucked inside in case of sickness. 
They even hug the warm little pots close to them 
when they lie down at night, instead of being cov- 
ered with thick bedclothes. The plan answers 
very well if a child lies quite still, but if he should 
dream too much or turn over in his sleep he may 
easily tip the pot over and spill ashes and fiery 
coals and all. Then there is jumping — there is 
screaming, too, and the mother has to wake in her 
corner and run to brush up the coals and to dress 
the burns with cool milk or butter to take out the 
smart. 

These children know nothing about Christmas, 
but they look forward to the great celebration 
that comes with the beginning of a New Year. 
The houses are hung with Chinese lanterns, there 
is music in the streets, and people visit one another 


PLAYING HOP-SCOTCH IN INDIA 


179 


and have feasts of nice sweet things, finer than 
everyday fare. Best of all there is a bonfire, when 
they burn an image representing Time, to show 
that the Old Year is quite past and gone and that 
the New Year can start fair and begin all over 
again. 


SCHOOLFELLOWS IN SUNNY 
BURMA 


Did you ever go visiting an unfamiliar school 
where one of your friends goes every day? But 
you certainly never did visit a school in Burma. 
Very few white people know those schools at all. 

Here is a chance for you now. 

First let us see how far away from your home 
the school is kept. Get out your geography once 
more, and find Burma on the map of Asia. It is 
at the eastern side of the great Bay of Bengal. 
Your map will show you a great river, the Irawadi 
(or Irrawaddy), rising among the mountains along 
the border-line between Burma and China. From 
those mountains it runs down almost southward 
to the great Bay. Have you found it? Now look 
for the city of Mandalay, about half-way up the 
river. Notice that the line of the Tropic of Can- 
cer crosses the river a little way above Mandalay. 

The school we are going to visit is on the east 
bank of that very river, near the point where the 
map shows it crossed by the Tropic of Cancer. 

Position in Burma. Schoolboys and their priestly 
teacher having lessons out-of-doors beside the 
Irrawaddy 

Isn’t this a delightful place for a school? Think 
how different these tree-covered hills are from 


SCHOOLFELLOWS IN BURMA l8l 

the bare rocky lands in Greenland, where you 
found the little Esquimaux. 

There is the great river, just as we might expect 
to see it. We are facing up-stream, of course — 
that is, towards its far-off beginning among the 
mountains. The city of Mandalay is forty miles 
farther down-river, behind us. It may not matter 
much to you where Mandalay is, but it matters a 
great deal to these boys; some of them have been 
to the city with their parents and had the best 
time in all their lives, and the other boys hope 
they too may go there some day. 

These are all boys, though they do wear pieces 
of cotton cloth wrapped about them to look like 
short skirts, and most of them have long hair, 
braided and twisted into a knot on the top of the 
head. It is the fashion here in Burma for boys 
to wear these curious clothes and to wear their 
hair in this way until they are old enough to go 
through a ceremony somewhat like “confirma- 
tion.” 

The teacher sitting on the bank is a Buddhist 
priest who lives with a number of other priests in 
a monastery (priests’ house) near by. His robe is 
yellow — that is the color always worn here in 
Burma by priests of his religion. 

Which boy do you think is the youngest? I 
should say the one nearest to us. He is perhaps 
not more than seven years old. The one be- 
yond him at the right looks quite old — as much 
as twelve or fourteen. The one sitting with his 
back towards us is almost as old as that. This is 


182 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


a country school, so it happens that big and little 
boys are under the same teacher. 

I wish the children had some of their writing 
slates out here, for you would like to see them. 
The slates are slabs of wood painted black like 
tiny blackboards, and the scholars write on them 
with slate pencils. The teacher writes certain let- 
ters or words or sentences at the top of each slate, 
and the boys copy what he has written, each boy 
shouting aloud the names of the letters or words 
as he writes them. American and English teach- 
ers object to a boy’s talking aloud in school, but 
this teacher punishes a boy if he does not talk 
aloud; if a boy keeps quiet the teacher does not 
feel sure that he is thinking about the lesson at 
all! 

If one of these boys reads carelessly or writes 
a bad, awkward hand, the teacher makes him 
march around the class, carrying a brighter boy 
on his back. That is as much as to say he is a 
stupid animal fit only to carry loads. It makes a 
boy dreadfully ashamed, for the others all laugh 
at him. 

The lessons they are studying here are quite 
different from yours. There is no work in arith- 
metic. The little counting and reckoning they 
need to know are picked up by watching people 
at home. Nobody will expect them to know the 
multiplication table or to reckon a problem in frac- 
tions. There are no geography lessons either. 
These boys have probably heard that there is a 
far-off place called England, for Englishmen quite 


SCHOOLFELLOWS IN BURMA 183 

often come traveling through this town ; but 
where the country of the queer white-faced Eng- 
lishmen may be these little brown fellows have not 
much idea. Probably not one of them ever heard 
of America. Most likely the teacher himself does 
not know anything about our land. He and the 
boys are very fond of the lovely country right here 
and well satisfied with it. 

So these boys never have to learn map ques- 
tions nor bother their heads about the capitals of 
other lands. 

It is just the same with history. The only his- 
tory lessons they learn are stories about the life 
of the great Lord Buddha, a noble and kind- 
hearted prince who was born ever so long, long, 
long ago, over in India. He was the son of a rich 
and powerful family, but he cared so much about 
the poor and the sick and the wicked that he will- 
ingly gave up his beautiful home and made him- 
self a poor man too. He spent his whole life try- 
ing to find out how people could learn to be good, 
and to become free from sorrow and grief. Since 
he died the stories about him have been exagger- 
ated and so made more and more wonderful in 
the telling, until now they are like queer fairy 
tales; but these people believe the tales are all 
true and boys are sent to school to learn them. 

The Buddha taught people some things which 
we in other lands do not believe at all, but many 
of his sayings are true and good, like what we 
learn in our own churches and Sunday schools. 
The teacher repeats a saying and the boys repeat 


184 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


it after him, over and over, over and over, until 
they know long, long chapters of wise books all 
by heart. 

The teacher tells stories, too, and the boys learn 
those -by heart. This is one which probably all 
these boys could repeat in concert in their own 
language : — 

Why Ants are Found Everywhere. 

“ All the animals of the forest came to the lion- 
king to pay him homage. The little ant came 
with the rest to bow down before the king of 
beasts, but the noblemen drove it away with scorn. 
When the chief of the ants heard of this, he was 
very angry, and sent a worm to creep into the ear 
of the lion and torment him. The lion roared 
aloud with pain and all the animals came running 
from every side to offer their services. But none 
of them could do any good. They could not get 
at the worm. 

At last, after many humble embassies, the chief 
of the ants was prevailed upon to send one of his 
subjects, who crept into the lion’s ear and pulled 
. out the worm. Since that time the ants have en- 
joyed the privilege of living everywhere and in 
any country on earth, while the other animals had 
only certain special places assigned to them.” 

There are proverb classes too in this school. 
The brightest of these boys know long lists of 
Burmese proverbs that they can say without a 
single mistake. These are some of the favorite 
ones : — 

“ The more a man knows, the more luck he has.” 

“If a cock ruffles up his feathers, it is easy to 
pluck him. If a man gets angry, he is done for.” 


SCHOOLFELLOWS IN BURMA 185 

“ Constant cutting dulls the knife. The man 
who talks too much ceases to be wise.” 

“ A cow that can give no milk will kick. An 
ignorant man quickly loses his temper.” 

Very likely the boys may have been reciting 
some of these very proverbs just now, and having 
their pronunciation corrected by the teacher. 
Burmese words are almost always short and they 
have pretty, musical sounds, but they are hard to 
pronounce correctly, and one word sometimes has 
several entirely different meanings according to 
the way in which it is said. Kyoung, for instance, 
may mean a monastery (a house where these 
priestly teachers live), or it may mean a pussy-cat; 
it depends on a certain very slight difference in 
pronunciation which you could hardly recognize 
even if you heard it ! 

The recitations are not always out of doors, like 
the one we have just interrupted by our visit; in 
fact they are oftener inside a room in the priests’ 
house. In any case there are no chairs and no 
desks, the boys sit on the floor just as they are 
sitting on the ground now. But when it is recess 
time, the boys come out here on the hillside to 
play. 

The very smallest pupils sometimes play baby- 
fashion, making mud-pies, or they stick leafy 
twigs in the ground and make believe they are 
beautiful sharp-pointed pagodas like those you see 
over beyond this high bank. The older ones have 
games of their own. 

One of the games they like best is playing chin- 


1 86 REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 

lohn. You have a ball made of bamboo, hollow 
and light and elastic, almost like a ball of thin rub- 
ber, and the game is to keep it in the air all the 
time without once letting it fall to the ground. 
You must not touch it with the arm or hand at 
all (that is not fair when you play chin-lohn ); you 
hit it with your knee or with your foot, your 
shoulder, your thigh or your cheek. It takes a 
clever boy to play it well, as you can imagine. 

Another game that they like better still is a 
little like marbles and a little like ninepins. They 
use big flat seeds to play with, and the game is to 
snap your seed so as to hit the biggest number 
of other seeds, set up in a certain way, in rows. 

These biggest boys can box pretty well, and 
they practice as often as -they can, for everybody 
here admires a clever boxer. 

I think that boy at the left of the group is sitting 
with one knee over the other in hopes we shall 
notice the tattooing on his legs; but, after all, we 
are not quite near enough to see it plainly. It 
hurts dreadfully to have colored patterns pricked 
into one's legs with sharp needles, but all the boys 
around here have it done and the boy whose skin 
(from the waist down) is marked with the most 
beautiful figures of elephants and tigers and lions 
is greatly envied by all the rest. 

The boys say that if you have a certain parties 
lar pattern pricked in just the right way, it has a 
wonderful effect, so that ever afterwards the hard- 
est whipping does not hurt you a bit. Sometimes 
that would be convenient; Burmese teachers and 


SCHOOLFELLOWS IN BURMA 1 87 

fathers are good-natured as a rule, but once in a 
while ! 

When the tattooing is once done, with blue or 
red or black ink let in under the skin, it lasts for- 
ever, so it is very important to choose the right 
patterns when the tattooing man comes around. 
Of course a boy does not have all his tattooing 
done at one time. He suffers the hurt in short 
periods, just as one does at home when teeth have 
to be filled at the dentist's. 

Have you noticed that the tattooed boy wears 
bracelets too on his ankles? Evidently he is the 
child of prosperous people. 

When the teacher speaks to these boys he has 
to call them by their given names, because nobody 
has a surname or family name. There are special 
rules too about giving names to little babies. 
With us, boys are often named for their fathers 
or grandfathers or uncles, but here a boy is named 
always according to the day of the week on which 
he was born. There is a certain list of names 
proper for boys and girls born on Monday; the 
parents choose from certain other names for a boy 
or girl born on Tuesday, and so on. For instance, 
a Tuesday boy is sometimes called Poh Sin , which 
means “ Grandfather Elephant," or San Nyohn 
(“ Beyond Comparison ”). In order to be quite 
polite, however, you prefix Moung (“ Brother ”) 
to a boy's name when you speak to him, and call 
him Moung Yoh (“ Brother Honesty ") or Moung 
Ohn (‘‘Brother Cocoanut ") or Moung Bah Too 
(“Brother Like-his-father"). Perhaps that littlest 


i88 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


boy used to be called just Loogalay Gne (“ Little 
wee boy ”), but now he is old enough to come to 
school he will be called by his real name. 

Did you ever hear a rhyme in English about the 
days of week and the kinds of children born on 
those days? It begins: — 

“ Monday’s child is fair of face ; 

Tuesday’s child is full of grace,” 


and so on. 

Here where these boys live they have sayings 
of that sort, telling what kind of boy is born on 
each day and what sort of animal will bring him 
good luck. There are fortune tellers who fancy 
they know all about it ! They declare, 

Monday’s boy is jealous. The tiger is his lucky 
beast. 

Tuesday’s boy is honest. The lion is his lucky 
beast. 

Wednesday’s boy is impulsive. The elephant 
is his lucky beast. 

Thursday’s boy is good-natured. The rat is his 
lucky beast. 

Friday’s boy is talkative. The guinea-pig is his 
lucky beast. 

Saturday’s boy is quarrelsome. The dragon is 
his lucky beast. 

Sunday’s boy is stingy. His lucky beast is a 
kalohn , a queer thing, half beast and half bird. 

Candles made in the shapes of these animals 
can be bought for a trifle at shops in the town, 
and the boys have great fun burning them for 
good luck. It is a pity they do not always remem- 


SCHOOLFELLOWS IN BURMA 189 

ber their proverb about “ The more a man knows, 
the more luck he has ! ” 

Look sharply at those many-storied spires be- 
yond where the boys are sitting now, and you 
will see each one has a sort of umbrella at the top. 
The umbrellas are beautifully gilded and so are 
the different-sized roofs below them. The strange 
buildings are payahs or pagodas built by rich men, 
the fathers or neighbors of these boys; each one 
contains some holy image or some object that had 
once belonged to a holy man. Whenever a new 
one is built there is a fine procession to see, with 
singing and music by a band, and usually a party 
afterwards to which all the man’s friends and 
neighbors are invited. 

Off at the right, on a hill by itself, you can see 
another pagoda — a great, tall one built of white- 
washed brick and concrete, with a magnificent 
gilded flag-staff near by. Can you see the white 
forms of some carved lions in front of it — that is, 
on the side towards the flagstaff? Lions like those 
are often put before a Burmese pagoda to remind 
people of this old story : — 

“ Once upon a time the child of a king was 
stolen by bad men and left in the jungle to die. 
A hungry lioness came by roaring for food, but 
when she saw how helpless the little brown baby 
was, she did not eat it; she had pity on it and 
carried it tenderly home to her den. There she 
gave the child food and tended it and played with 
it and grew to love it just as if it had been a 
hairy cub of her own. 

“ But when the baby grew to be a boy, he did 
not want to stay with the lion in the jungle den. 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


190 


He ran away and swam across a huge river like 
this one, to find his father’s palace. The lion 
followed him to the shore and stood watching 
while he swam and swam farther and farther 
away; and when he reached the other bank her 
heart was broken and she died of grief, because 
she loved him so.” 

Ever since that day people have set lions in 
front of their finest pagodas to remind them of 
the love that made even a roaring lion pitiful and 
kind-hearted. 

The sisters of these boys do not go to school 
at all. They learn from their mothers how to 
cook rice for dinner and how to sew and how to 
keep the house clean, and then they have all the 
rest of the time to play. 

Brothers and sisters play together when they 
are quite small, but when a boy grows to be twelve 
or thirteen years old he has his long hair cut off 
and takes a new name in addition to his old one, 
and after that he feels that he is a young man. It 
will be a great occasion when one of these boys 
becomes a ko-yin. All boys do it after they have 
studied long enough in school. It is something 
like being baptized and confirmed and graduating 
from a grammar school, all in one. 

When the day comes, the boy will have new 
clothes, as fine as his people can afford, and his 
boy and girl friends, all wearing their own best 
clothes, will form in a procession and march with 
him around the town, dancing and singing and 
making calls at the houses of his relatives. Then 
they will all come back to the boy’s house and 


SCHOOLFELLOWS IN BURMA 191 

there they will find priests like this teacher wait- 
ing for them. The boy will change his gay clothes 
for a yellow robe like the teacher’s, and have his 
hair cut off. Then he will recite a hymn, declar- 
ing that he wishes to learn the right way to live — 
the way that leads to goodness and happiness. 
After that the priests will take him back with them 
to live at the monastery for a few weeks and think 
it all over. 

At the boy’s home that night the rest of the 
family and the neighbors will have a grand party 
with music and dancing and a funny play which 
makes them all laugh, but the boy will not be 
there to see. 

However, a boy does not usually stay long in 
the monastery; sometimes he decides to stay al- 
ways and be a priest, but usually he stays only a 
week or two. Then he comes back to his own 
family, and everybody treats him with extra po- 
liteness afterwards, because he is supposed to have 
changed from a careless child into a sensible man. 

But there are hosts of good times after that, for 
the boy as well as for his friends! No people in 
the world are fonder of fun. 

New Year’s Day is a special chance to make 
jokes and play tricks. It comes here in April in- 
stead of in January. At midnight people fire guns 
and make all sorts of terrific noises like an Ameri- 
can Fourth of July. Then all day long the older 
people go about visiting their friends and the boys 
and girls have great sport splashing water on each 
other. That kind of frolic seems a bit like our 


IQ2 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


“ April Fool ” jokes; it is not really so very funny, 
but everybody is good-tempered and nobody 
makes a fuss about having the contents of a 
cocoanut-shell dipper poured down his back! 

Y ay kadaw mee (“ I pay my compliments to you 
with water ”), that is what a saucy boy says when 
he splashes a dipperful in his chum’s face. Then 
of course the other fellow chases him to get a 
chance to pour water down his neck in return ! 

In the fall there are sometimes races on this 
river, when crews of twenty-four men paddle long, 
slender boats as fast as the wind. That is exciting 
indeed, for all the boys and girls have their fav- 
orites among the boats and they stand on the 
shore and shout and cheer and yell when they 
think their friends are going to win. 

If you look carefully down among the trees, 
near the river, you will see some of the houses 
where these boys live. The name of this town is 
Thabeikkyin. The houses are all little, low cot- 
tages, built of wood and bamboo. Nobody here 
cares for a big fine house. If a man grows rich 
he spends his money building beautiful pagodas 
with gold umbrellas on the top, or giving parties 
for his friends, but the family live in just the same 
little house as before. 

These boys go to a great many parties. Neigh- 
bors and friends here are always giving parties, 
but, as the houses are so small, the guests usually 
sit on the ground outside the house. Almost al- 
ways there is an entertainment. Some people 
sing, some dance, some act plays, some do sleight- 


SCHOOLFELLOWS IN BURMA 


193 


of-hand tricks or go through funny antics like 
circus acrobats and clowns. It is all very amusing 
to see, and, without any doubt, these boys have 
learned a good many of the tricks and the dances 
just by looking on. 

It is very, very hot most of the year here in 
Thabeikkyin, and nobody wants to eat a hearty 
meal in the middle of the day. After school is 
out these boys will play games and tell stories 
and look after their pet dogs and pigeons, and 
then, about sunset, the mother and the girls at 
home will have dinner ready. There will certainly 
be a great white heap of boiled rice on a big tray, 
and perhaps there will be also asparagus and bam- 
boo twigs boiled till they are nice and tender. 
Maybe the mother will provide another tray or 
platter with dried fish, or fish pounded into a 
queer sort of paste as thick as butter or marma- 
lade. If it is a special holiday or there are guests 
at home, there may be fried ginger, too, and a lit- 
tle bowl of soup for each one to drink. The fam- 
ily will sit on the floor around the rice-tray and 
each one will help himself with his fingers. A 
well-bred child manages that quite neatly, without 
dropping the rice in his lap or disturbing the part 
which somebody else wishes to eat. These boys 
would think your own forks and spoons at home 
very comical things and would wonder how in the 
world you manage to use them! 

Before a boy goes to bed he will have a bath, 
not by getting into a tub but by pouring water 
over himself from a big dipper of cocoanut shell. 


13 


194 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


Then he will curl himself up on a clean palm-leaf 
mat, and that will be the last he knows until the 
dogs are barking and the pigeons cooing and the 
mother is getting breakfast ready the next morn- 
ing. 

Ever and ever so many years ago, a wise man 
here in Burma said that changes would come to 
beautiful Burma and her people. Sometime, so 
he declared, magic boats would go up and down 
this very river without sails and without oars, and 
then other people, not Burmans, would rule the 
land. 

The prophecy is coming true. Already there 
are boats without sails and without oars that do 
sometimes go up and down this river steered by 
fair-faced Englishmen. (You can easily guess 
what makes them go !) And now Burma is a part 
of the British Empire, and Englishmen, appointed 
by the British government, are taking charge of 
a great many things which the Burmans used to 
manage for themselves. In the larger towns there 
are now English schools w 4 here boys can go and 
learn lessons just like yours, and pass examina- 
tions, and get certificates to show what good work 
they have done. 

It may be that any one of these very boys will 
sometime go to an English school in Mandalay, 
forty miles down the river behind you, or at Ran- 
goon, and learn to speak English and to read 
books like your own. Then he will probably be- 
come a business man and buy and sell rice or tim- 
ber and have a great many affairs on his mind. 


SCHOOLFELLOWS IN BURMA 


195 


But probably, as long as he lives, he will remem- 
ber the days when he was a boy here in Thabeik- 
kyin and went to school on this very hillside, and 
played chin-lohn , and had his legs tattooed with 
lions and tigers, and studied aloud the old prov- 
erb: — 

“ A mountain is climbed step by step ; 

Wisdom is learned little by little.” 


SCHOOLMATES IN FAR-AWAY 
CHINA 


Look at the map of China in your geography 
and you will find the city of Canton in the south- 
eastern part of the country, near the sea. The 
map shows a large river flowing past the city. In 
that river there are several islands, though your 
map is not large enough to show them. 

Canton is as large as Chicago. It has as many 
people as the English Liverpool and Manchester 
added together. There are not many American 
and European people living in Canton, but those 
who do make their homes there live on one of the 
river-islands (the Shameen), connected with the 
rest of the city by a bridge. Several of the Ameri- 
cans who live on the island are missionaries and 
teachers, and one of the teachers has brought her 
class of girls over to a pleasant place beside the 
river where they can sit under the trees and see 
the boats go by while they work or talk. We are 
to meet them there. 

j Position in China. Mission children with one 
little American girl, Canton 

You can easily find the one little American girl, 
I am sure. When her father and mother come 
back to America, and bring her with them, what 


SCHOOLMATES IN FAR-AWAY CHINA 


197 


strange stories she can tell her American friends 
about the Chinese girls with whom she used to 
go to school! The other girls are all older than 
she, but I do not believe those sitting on the bench 
are very much older — do you? The way their 
hair is drawn back, smooth and tight, makes them 
look like little women till you notice how young 
their faces are. 

These girls all belong to prosperous families. 
Their fathers have plenty of money, and the queer 
trousers and baggy coats they wear are of bright 
colored silk. We think it strange to see girls wear- 
ing trousers, but that is the custom here. Some 
of these girls, whose fathers are quite rich, have a 
great many different pairs of silk and satin 
trousers in all sorts of gay colors, and some are 
beautifully embroidered. They are as proud of 
their trousers as any western girl of her pretty 
dresses. 

It seems as if this girl directly in front of you 
must want us to see her long hair. It is pretty 
and long, sure enough, but does it all grow on 
her own head? That would be something quite 
wonderful for a girl of her age. Maybe her own 
braid reaches to her waist and the rest is fastened 
on to make a fine appearance. 

If you look closely you will see that one of the 
other girls wears her hair “ done up ” in a curious 
knot at the side of her head. Probably she is en- 
gaged to be married, and that is why her mother 
does up her hair. Girls are engaged very young 
here in China, and are usually married to young 


198 real children in many lands 

men whom they have never seen. The older peo- 
ple arrange all those things themselves, and a girl 
is taught to be obedient and pleasant to the hus- 
band her parents choose for her, no matter 
whether she likes him or not. 

Do you notice what queer little feet those girls 
have — the ones who are standing at the side near- 
est the river? They are much taller and older 
than our little American, but their feet look not 
nearly as long as hers, because, ever since they 
were six or seven years old, their poor little toes 
have been bent back under the sole of the foot and 
the whole foot has been tied up very tightly with 
long bandages of cloth to keep it from growing. 
Of course, it hurt dreadfully when the mother at 
home began to do it. When a little girl first has 
her feet bound, it makes them ache so badly she 
cries with the pain, and can hardly bear to step 
on them, but after a while she gets used to having 
them always numb and stiff and sore, and she does 
not think much about them, except when the 
bandages are taken off for a bath and changed for 
clean cloths. Then she almost wishes they need 
never be put on again — almost, but not quite, for 
little girls here in China like to do whatever their 
friends do, and if one’s friends all have wee small 
feet, why, one wants to have small feet, too! 
Sometimes the missionaries do succeed in making 
a Chinese mother see how dreadful the custom is, 
and so there are always a few nice girls who are 
allowed to be comfortable in spite of fashion. 

Wouldn’t you think it would be very hard to 


SCHOOLMATES IN FAR-AWAY CHINA 


199 


skip about, or dance, or play running games with 
such stiff little feet? So it is. These girls do not 
play lively games, and it is not thought good man- 
ners for a nice girl to dance. When they are 
very small indeed they run about, and play puss- 
in-the-corner and other games much as their little 
brothers do, but since they were eight or nine, 
they have occupied themselves very quietly. They 
played “cat’s cradle” and jackstraws; they amused 
themselves with dolls and puzzles and fairy-stories 
when they were smaller. Now they like to sew 
and embroider as their mothers do and they are 
all good at such needlework. 

Chinese parents do not usually send girls to 
school. Boys usually go to school every day and 
many of them study tremendously hard, for they 
must pass severe examinations, if they wish to 
have any very pleasant kind of work to do when 
they grow up. It is not thought necessary for 
girls to learn much besides housekeeping, needle- 
work and music. But fathers and mothers are 
fond of their daughters here just as they are in 
other lands, and, if one of these girls wanted very 
much indeed to come to the American teacher’s 
school, they would probably let her come and be 
rather proud of her learning afterwards. 

All these girls can speak a little English, though 
you would find them quite shy at first if you tried 
to talk with them. It is usually hard for them 
to pronounce our letter r; they oftener make it 
sound like / and say “ lite ” for “ write.” 

They are very fond of the American women 


200 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


who are their teachers and often bring them pres- 
ents just as girls do at home for favorite teachers. 

Some of those small boats you see in the river 
are carrying loads of one sort or another across 
or up and down the stream. The river is flowing 
away from you in the direction in which you are 
looking. Sometimes fine large steamers from 
America and England come up the river, bringing 
passengers and freight from away around at the 
other side of the world. The greater part of the 
busy city of Canton lies off at your left, beyond 
these gardens which you see now and across an- 
other part of the river. It is over there where 
the steamers land, and where the parents of these 
Chinese girls have their homes. 

When these girls go home they will bow very 
low to their fathers and mothers, and, if older 
people are talking, they will always wait very 
politely for a chance to speak. They do not sit 
down till they are asked to do so. A Chinese girl 
who went noisily about the house, or sat com- 
fortably before being invited to do so, would be 
considered very ill-bred and rude. Little girls say 
A-ye for “ papa ” and A-ma for “ mamma.” 

When dinner is ready at five or six o’clock at 
night, mothers and daughters do not often eat 
with the father. He has his meals served first, 
and, if men friends come to visit him, the women 
and children and young girls are not invited to 
the same dining-room; they have their good things 
to eat by themselves. 

Are they “good things”? That depends on a 


SCHOOLMATES IN FAR-AWAY CHINA 


201 


person’s taste. These girls think that rice and fish 
and fried peanuts make a very nice meal. If there 
is a dessert of fruit, it is served first. Did you 
ever eat preserved ginger that came packed in an 
earthen jar? Very likely it came from this very 
city of Canton and was just like what these girls 
have eaten. 

The cook in the kitchen cuts up the fish or meat 
into little pieces before sending it into the dining- 
room, for the family use no knives nor forks. 
When one of these sweet faced girls is eating her 
dinner, she uses her fingers in a dainty, careful 
fashion, for some kinds of foods; she drinks her 
tea and drinks her soup from cups and bowls. If 
she has rice or fish or vegetables in little pieces, 
she takes the pieces between the ends of two slen- 
der little chopsticks of ivory or wood, in a very 
odd way. She does not take one chopstick in each 
hand — oh, no, she holds them both very cleverly 
between the fingers of her right hand (it is impos- 
sible to describe how it is done, but any Chinese 
could show you) and manages beautifully, never 
letting a morsel drop disagreeably in the process. 
You might think her awkward if you saw her tod- 
dling about on those funny little feet of hers, but 
when it came to eating with chopsticks you would 
find yourself the awkward one, and would quite 
admire her ladylike deftness. 

There are a good many festivals and holidays 
when these girls have special goodies — little cakes 
and strips of candied cocoanut. Sometimes these 
girls give parties for their special friends, but the 


202 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


parties are very small, with Only three or four 
guests, and no boys are ever invited. When the 
daughter of a rich man goes to see her friends she 
rides in a curious sort of carriage without horses. 
It is really a sort of large box, comfortably cush- 
ioned, and two men servants carry it by poles at- 
tached to the top of the box! 

If there are babies at home, you may be sure 
these older sisters are very fond of them. Chinese 
babies are the dearest and funniest mites and they 
have all sorts of things done to amuse them be- 
cause everybody loves them. There are a great 
many little songs and games for wee Chinese chil- 
dren. A good many American girls have sung to 
their little brothers and sisters the Mother Goose 
rhymes about “ Rock-a-bye, baby ” and “ Bye-low 
baby bunting.” These girls know songs of much 
the same sort, with pretty Chinese words. These 
are some of the baby songs, put into English.* 

“ Mrs. Chang, Mrs. Lee, 

Mamma has a small baby ; 

Stands up firm, 

Sits up straight, 

Won’t eat milk, 

But lives on cake.” 

One is something like our rhyme about how “This 
little pig went to market ” : — 

“ A great big brother, 

And a little brother, — so; 

* Taken from “Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes,” copyright, 1900, 
by Fleming H. Revell Company. 


SCHOOLMATES IN FAR-AWAY CHINA 


203 


A big bell-tower, 

And a temple and a show ; 

And a little baby wee — wee 
Always wants to go ! ” 

If one of those smaller girls on the bench beyond 
our little American should find a lady-bug on the 
grass or on the trunk of one of those banyan trees, 
she will catch it and hold it in her little fist, while 
she sings to it (in Chinese, of course) : — 

“ Lady-bug, lady-bug, 

Fly away — do. 

Fly to the mountain 
And feed upon dew. 

Feed upon dew 

And sleep on a rug, 

And then run away 

Like a good little bug.” 

Since these girls have been to the American teach- 
ers’ school, they have heard about Christmas and 
have had Christmas presents from their American 
friends, but at home nobody ever makes any cele- 
bration over the birthday of the Christ Child — in 
fact most Chinese people have never heard of Him. 
They do have great good times at New Year’s. 
The Chinese New Year comes not on January 
first, but somewhere between the middle of Janu- 
ary and the middle of February, varying in differ- 
ent years. Then there are music and fireworks, 
and all sorts of sweet and nice things to eat, and 
everybody has a very good time. These girls are 
not taken to see the fireworks, but they have par- 
ties at home. 


204 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


The brothers have rather more fun than sisters 
do, and much more work too. Boys go to sep- 
arate schools of their own — most of them to Chi- 
nese schools where the teachers are Chinese men 
with their hair in queues. There are almost no 
vacations, and they have to begin studying at 
seven o’clock in the morning. 

As soon as they reach the schoolhouse they go 
in and bow very respectfully to the Lew Se (“ ven- 
erable teacher ”). They study the multiplication 
table at school, and they practice reading and 
writing, too; this means a vast amount of careful 
drill, for the Chinese have an immense number 
of curiously shaped characters standing for whole 
words, and boys must learn to recognize them in- 
stantly and to make them perfectly, using a slen- 
der brush dipped in ink, instead of a pen or pencil. 

The lessons are almost entirely learned by heart 
out of Chinese books, and bright boys soon be- 
come able to learn whole chapters, word for word. 
The teachers do not often explain the lessons; the 
boys just learn them, and if they do not under- 
stand them at the time they often come to un- 
derstand them later, when they are grown up. It 
is not a very good kind of teaching on the whole, 
for the boys do not learn how to think for them- 
selves, — however, Chinese schools have always 
been like that and the people believe they are the 
best that can be. 

The boys do not have their feet tied up to make 
them small, so they are able to play all sorts of 
active games. They have a funny way of playing 


SCHOOLMATES IN FAR-AWAY CHINA 


205 


shuttlecock, kicking the feather top up into the 
air instead of striking it with a battledore or 
racket. Very small boys play horse and roll hoops 
just as American children do; boys as old as these 
girls have great fun flying kites and playing ball. 
Boys go out much more freely than their sisters 
to see street shows and processions; when they 
are old enough they are taken to the theatres to 
see Chinese plays that last all day. 

You remember, of course, that these are rich 
girls and we are thinking about how they and 
their brothers live. But, as a matter of fact, there 
are thousands and thousands and thousands of 
poor children in this very city of Canton who have 
no nice clothes, who seldom have enough to eat, 
and who live in the most forlorn and dirty homes 
you can imagine. Those boys and girls often have 
no chance to go to school at all, but have to work 
hard to help earn money for their families. Some 
Chinese girls not much older than these pretty 
schoolmates work in factories where they are paid 
not more than a dollar a month. Such poor girls 
do have one advantage — they are not expected to 
follow the fashions, so their mothers usually let 
their feet grow as nature intended. You see, if 
they miss the fun of pretty clothes and picnics, 
they also miss the dreadful pain of bound-up toes ! 

Not many Chinese girls come to America. They 
and their people feel that home is the best place 
for girls and women. A good many Chinese men 
have come at different times, but only a few bring 
their wives and children. The government some- 


206 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


times chooses particularly bright, promising boys 
and sends them to America, England and other 
western countries, to study at foreign colleges and 
learn all about foreign ways. 

It is not likely that any of these nice, well-bred 
girls will ever come to America, but it is quite 
possible that one of them may by and by marry 
a Chinese man who has been a college student in 
Cambridge or in Chicago, and he may tell her 
stories of the strange ways of living in England 
and America. Then she may say — “Yes, I too 
once knew some Americans. An American lady 
was my teacher in Canton, and there was a little 
American girl in the same school. I wonder 
where she lives now ! ” 


RECESS-TIME IN JAPAN, THE LAND 
OF THE RISING SUN 

You have many a time seen paper fans that 
came from Japan, gay with pictures of ladies in 
strange, bright-colored clothes. Some of the fans 
perhaps showed you pictures of a steep mountain 
with clouds or snow about the top. The mountain 
they represent is a real mountain and many a 
Japanese country boy and girl has seen it looking 
just as it does on the fans. 

But people — real live people — are even more in- 
teresting than mountains. Now how would you 
like to see some real Japanese children of your 
own age, in a school yard at recess? 

Find Yokohama on your map; it is on the east- 
ern seacoast of the country — a place where a great 
many American and English steamships land. 
The school grounds that you will see are there in 
Yokohama, not very far from the seashore. 

Position in Japan . Schoolhouse and grounds with 
vine-covered shelter and little folks playing , 
Yokohama 

Is the schoolyard on the same level as the space 
at this side of the fence? I wonder how these 
large boys happen to be outside the fence instead 
of playing there with the others; perhaps they 


208 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


have been excused to go on an errand, and are 
waiting only for a moment to watch some game. 
I do not believe they are playing truant, for, in 
the first place, children have a very good time at 
this school, and in the second place, truants would 
probably be ashamed to show themselves in this 
way before all the other children who have kept 
faithfully at their work. 

Possibly some very interesting game is to be 
played, and that is why these grown-up women 
have come to the fence, too. See in what a funny 
way the baby rides on its mother’s back. Some- 
times it sits behind her on a sort of broad belt or 
sash which mamma ties around her waist, in front. 
Sometimes mamma tucks the little one into the 
back of her cloak, with its head bobbing over her 
shoulder. Can you see two babies here? Both 
of them act as if they were really interested to see 
what is going on down in that yard! 

Almost all Japanese babies are carried about in 
this way by their mothers or their older sisters. 
The mother straps the little fellow tightly to her 
back so that he cannot fall off, and then she walks 
about doing her housework, or goes to the mar- 
ket, or goes shopping, just as if he were not there 
at all. As soon as school is out very likely an 
older sister of each baby will take charge of him 
in the same way. It is no trouble at all. If the 
little one is tied on properly in the first place, he 
never falls off; he almost never cries. The sister 
can run about, and play puss-in-the-corner or 
blindman’s-buff (she calls the game “ eye-hid- 


RECESS TIME IN JAPAN 209 

ing ”)> just as well as if the baby were asleep on a 
cushion. In fact baby often does take a nap on 
her shoulders while she is having a good time 
with the other girls. 

Do these boys wear shoes like yours? How 
are they different from yours? See, some of the 
queer shoes have two strips of wood under the 
sole, holding them well up out of the dirt. Some 
are like flat slippers with soles and toes but noth- 
ing to hold them on at the heel. If you tried to 
run with such queer shoes on your toes, you would 
certainly drop them when you lifted your feet, but 
these women and children never drop them by 
accident. They like to have them in this shape, 
because, when they do want to drop them, there 
are no buttons nor shoelaces to bother, and here 
in Japan everybody takes off his shoes when he 
goes into the house. 

Do these people wear stockings? Many Jap- 
anese do, but they are not like your stockings; 
the great toe is separated from the other toes like 
the thumb in a mitten, and the sole is made much 
thicker than the rest so that it may not wear out 
when the owner runs about in his stocking-feet. 

When one of these boys goes home he drops off 
his shoes at the door, and, if his feet are dusty, 
he washes them nice and clean before entering 
the sitting-room in his bare feet or his stocking 
feet. The floors at home are covered with thick 
straw matting, and people sit on the floor or on 
little flat cushions, so you can see there is good 
reason for taking off one’s shoes. Treading on 


14 


210 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


the mats with dusty boots would be as rude as 
climbing with muddy rubbers into the pretty 
chairs in your own parlor at home. 

See what big sleeves these mothers wear. All 
Japanese ladies wear gowns cut like these; there 
are pockets in the big sleeves for carrying paper 
handkerchiefs and money and any little things 
that mamma buys while she is out for her errands. 
Many a time she has carried candy and funny new 
toys home to the children, tucked into a corner of 
those huge sleeves. 

Do you notice that one of the mothers wears a 
broad sash of light-colored cloth tied about her 
waist and hanging in big, flat loops behind? Lit- 
tle girls like to wear such sashes when they are 
nicely dressed, and, even though it does mean a 
good deal of trouble, they stand very still while 
mamma pulls out the loops just so, that they may 
hang exactly like a grown up woman’s. The boys 
do not care quite so much about their clothes. 

What a fine large schoolyard the boys and girls 
have for their play 1 See — if it should be very hot, 
they can have their games in the shade of that big 
trellis where the vines are growing. They know 
how to play a great many of the same games you 
have seen other children playing in other lands. 
The boys you see here now all have tops and kites 
and pop-guns at home. They often play jack- 
stones. They delight to walk on stilts and to play 
“ tug-of-war.” Sometimes they play a game called 
Kotoro. One boy is “ It ” and the rest stand in a 
row, one behind another, taking hold of each 


RECESS TIME IN JAPAN 


21 1 


other’s clothes so as to make a long, close line. 
Then the boy who is “ It ” tries to catch the last 
boy in the line. The whole line bends this way 
and that way, and doubles and coils to prevent 
him. He dodges around first at one side and then 
at the other trying to reach the last boy, but it is 
pretty hard work if the others are quick and clever 
at barring him off. 

Some of the boys — even quite small ones — are 
pretty good wrestlers. Grown up men here enjoy 
seeing a good wrestling match. The older boys 
play football and baseball and play them well, too. 

And what do the girls play? Probably every 
girl you see here has dolls at home, or, if she has 
grown too big to play with them herself, she may 
have given them to her little sisters or her baby 
cousins. 

The things made here in Japan for little girls’ 
dolls are the dearest and nicest you ever saw; 
there is every sort of furniture that grown up 
Japanese people use — tiny dishes, wee teapots and 
baskets, flower pots with flowers in them, and even 
little two-wheeled carriages in which the doll-ladies 
may go out riding. In March of every year there 
is a special day when every little girl in Japan 
plays with her prettiest dolls and serves a special 
feast for them on the daintiest dishes that she 
owns. 

These girls often play battledore-and-shuttle- 
cock, like the children you saw in Paris. They 
like to play checkers, and they know ever so many 
amusing card games which they play as you and 


212 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


your chums play “ Authors.” Some cards have 
proverbs printed on them and some have verses 
of Japanese poetry. 

There is a funny sort of “ tag ” here in Japan, 
where a girl tries to step on another girl’s shadow 
on the ground. They could not play that game 
here to-day, for you see there are no clear, strong 
shadows. It must be a cloudy day in Yokohama. 

The boys as well as the girls have a special day 
— not for dolls, but for flags. Their day comes in 
May, and then every house that has any boys in 
the family hangs out gay flags to show how glad 
the parents are that the boys were born. A great 
many of the flags are in the shape of a kind of 
fish called the carp — a strong, resolute sort of fish 
that is not easily discouraged; it will swim straight 
up-stream against the strong current of a river. 
They say Japanese boys ought to be like that — 
able to make up their minds to do what is right, 
and never in all the world to give up just because 
things are not easy. 

Boys and girls both do really learn to be brave 
and strong here in Japan. You do not very often 
see lazy children here. They work while they 
work and play while they play, and they manage 
to learn a great deal at school besides having the 
most delightful good times. 

What do they study in those schoolhouses at 
the farther side of this playground? That depends 
of course on how old a child is. All the scholars 
are classified in different grades just as they are 
in your own schools at home. The very little ones 


RECESS TIME IN JAPAN 


213 


learn to read and to write and to draw; the older 
ones have arithmetic, too, and geography and his- 
tory. The oldest of all study English and some 
of them can read and speak it very well indeed. 

Japanese books are very different from ours. 
If you could look at the Readers that these boys 
study you could not make out a single idea. A 
Japanese reader does not use letters like ours — 
A, B, C and so on ; its pages are covered with odd- 
shaped marks that stand for certain sounds or cer- 
tain words. When these children read a story, 
they begin at the back of the book and read to- 
wards the front — that is the way Japanese books 
are made. They think our books are very 
strangely planned! Of course everybody natur- 
ally thinks his own way of doing things is the 
easiest. 

On the next two pages you will find a Japanese 
story which many of these children have read in 
their own books. It is printed here as it would 
be printed in a Japanese book, only of course the 
Japanese would use their own curious letter-signs 
and word-signs instead of our alphabet. You will 
find it fairly easy to read. Begin at the upper 
right corner of the last page and read downwards; 
then take the next column in the same way, and 
so on. 

The writing lessons in this school are also very 
different from yours. It is much harder to learn 
to write Japanese than to learn to write English, 
for these people use curious marks, almost alike 
yet really quite different, which mean entirely dif- 


214 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 



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RECESS TIME IN JAPAN 


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2l6 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


ferent words. One has to learn a great many of 
those word-signs perfectly so as to read them ex- 
actly right, and it takes long, long practice to 
make them quite correctly. The children do not 
use pencils or pens; they write with long-handled 
brushes dipped in black ink. They draw with 
brushes, too, using sometimes black ink and some- 
times bright colors. Many of them can draw beau- 
tifully. 

If one of these boys is very good at his lessons, 
his people will very likely send him to a high 
school, and then to a university, where he can 
learn a great deal more. There was once a boy 
who became a student in a university only a few 
miles from here (in Tokyo), and he thought out a 
way to cut a great canal from a certain Japanese 
lake down to a distant river. While he was at 
work making the drawings, and writing out the 
explanation of his good idea, he lost the use of his 
right hand; but he would not give up — not he. 
He remembered the fish-flags that his father used 
to hang out for him on the fifth of May when he 
was a small boy! He said to himself — “ Never 
mind, I am going to do it, no matter how hard it 
is ! ” He learned all over again to write and to 
draw, using his left hand. 

When his work was ready, everybody saw how 
wise and practical the plan was, and they carried 
it out, cutting a tunnel just as he told them to do, 
right through a mountain. Now the water that 
runs through the canal feeds the farmers’ fields, 
and helps keep a great deal of machinery going; 


RECESS TIME IN JAPAN 


217 


it is thanks to him that Kyoto, one of the biggest 
cities in Japan, has electric lights just like those in 
America and England. 

Very likely some of these boys you see right 
here may do just as helpful things. Very likely 
some of them will be soldiers, and bravely fight 
for their country if she needs them, to keep her 
safe and happy. Many of these very children have 
fathers or uncles or big brothers who are soldiers. 

But just at present they themselves are not old 
enough either to plan canals or to go to the 
wars. When school is out, they will say Sayonara 
(“ Good-bye ”) to the teachers and to their class- 
mates, and run home to dinner. 

What do you suppose they will have? Boiled 
fish, most likely, and rice, and a sort of turnip or 
large radish that they call daikon — maybe little 
sweet cakes and tea. 

And how do you suppose they will eat dinner? 
Nobody here has chairs and dining-tables. The 
proper way is to make one’s self very neat and 
tidy, and to sit on the floor while mamma or the 
older sister or a maid helps the little folks. Peo- 
ple here do not use plates like yours, but they 
have pretty bowls, sometimes of china and some- 
times of wood covered with shining lacquer so 
that it is hard and smooth as china. These chil- 
dren will eat the rice and fish and the vegetables 
with two slender little “ chopsticks ” held cleverly 
between the fingers of the right hand. The sticks 
are sometimes of wood, sometimes of ivory. Eat- 
ing with them is a good deal like eating with a 


2 1 8 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


couple of your grandmother’s knitting needles in- 
stead of a fork and spoon; if you yourself had a 
meal of boiled rice served to you in that way, you 
would probably drop most of the white grains on 
their way to your mouth, and feel dreadfully 
ashamed of your clumsiness. These children are 
used to it, and have a daintily neat way of eating. 
None but the very little ones ever drop their food. 

If they want a bowl refilled, they say to the 
mother or maid, Motto , kudasai (“ to give more, 
please be so kind ”). 

On holidays, when school does not keep, there 
are a great many interesting things to do here in 
Yokohama. All the temples — which correspond 
to our churches — have gardens around them 
where children are allowed to play at any time, so 
long as they do not quarrel. There are a great 
many street shows, and processions, and interest- 
ing things to see as one goes about. Peddlers 
walk through the streets selling parched and 
sugared beans just as in America they might ped- 
dle popped-corn. They sell candy too in all sorts 
of odd shapes — birds, fishes, flowers, all kinds of 
things; they will make candy take almost any 
form you like by blowing it from the end of a 
long tube, somewhat as we blow soap-bubbles at 
the end of a pipe-stem. Then there are other ped- 
dlers that go around from street to street with one 
pail of batter for making little cakes, and another 
pail or bowl containing a hot fire of charcoal. A 
boy or a girl pays a copper coin worth about one- 
tenth of an American cent, and has some nice lit- 


RECESS TIME IN JAPAN 


219 


tie sweet cakes cooked right there on the spot. 
If they like, the peddler will let children cook the 
batter-cakes for themselves over his hot fire. That 
is great fun. 

In fine, windy weather, these boys go out flying 
kites, and even some of the grown-up fathers and 
mothers go too with the girls to see the sport. 
Kites here are made in all sorts of curious shapes, 
like birds and fishes, and queer beasts with wings 
and teeth and long tails. Very often a game is 
made of the kite-flying. The kite strings are 
made sharp by gluing little bits of broken glass to 
the cord, and each boy tries, for fun, to make his 
kite-string cross another kite-string and cut it off. 
The kite whose string is cut off blows away, and 
falls to the ground, and the other kite beats. 

All these children go on picnics and excursions 
now and then with their fathers and mothers. 
There are a great many pleasant places for pic- 
nics near here — groves and fields and beautiful 
river banks, and rocky seashore, too. Sometimes 
they take luncheon in baskets from home, and 
sometimes they order tea and cakes at pretty lit- 
tle restaurants. 

Birthdays are celebrated here with presents and 
special fun. The birthday of the Emperor of 
Japan comes on the 3d of November and is a 
great public holiday. 

Most of these little people of Yokohama do not 
know about our Christmas, for their religion is 
very different from ours. They think that New 
Year's Day is perhaps the best in the whole year. 


220 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


All their houses are made pretty with flags and 
everybody puts on the nicest kimonos; the girls 
wear their best sashes and have pretty ribbons tied 
in their hair. Neighbors come visiting, or father 
and mother take the young folks to see fireworks 
and grand parades and funny shows. It is all very 
fine. 

When sleepy-time comes at night, no mother is 
ever afraid that even the youngest of these chil- 
dren will roll off the bedstead and bump a sleepy 
head on the floor, and for a very good reason — 
there are no bedsteads in Japan ! Suppose these 
boys here have eaten their supper and then read 
story-books for a while (there are fairy stories and 
stories of animals and goblins in Japanese books); 
suppose they have played “ go-bang ” or made 
shadow pictures on the walls; by and by any liv- 
ing boy does get sleepy. They go to the bath- 
room and have a nice hot bath, so that they are 
as clean as clean can be; then they put on fresh 
nightclothes and find that the mother or the big 
sister or the servant has made a bed ready. 

The bed is just two or three thick, soft, wadded 
quilts, spread on the clean straw matting of the 
floor, with more quilts to tuck around and keep 
the sleeper warm. Japanese mothers do not fur- 
nish beds with soft pillows. If the children use 
any pillows at all they are small blocks of wood, 
padded with cotton and covered with clean white 
paper. 0 jasumi nasai (“ be so good as to take 
honorable rest ”) they say to father and mother, 
and they shut their eyes. The partition walls be- 


RECESS TIME IN JAPAN 


221 


tween the children’s rooms and the others may be 
only of paper, and for a while they will hear all 
the talk in the next room, just as if there were no 
wall at all; but in a very few minutes they go off 
into the very same queer dreamland where you 
yourself go wandering at night. Only, as this is 
away around at the other side of the world from 
the United States, their sleepy time does not come 
at just the same instant as yours. While these lit- 
tle Japanese are reciting their lessons in the after- 
noon, it is the middle of the night in New York. 
At the very time when London boys and girls are 
eating their noon luncheon, these little cousins in 
Yokohama are all at home, fast asleep and dream- 
ing. 

Then, when daylight comes once more here in 
Japan — O-hayo (“good-morning”) everybody will 
say. These children will jump up and wash and 
dress themselves. The partition walls of the little 
bedrooms in their homes will be pushed back like 
folding doors, or lifted out of place like American 
window screens, changing a number of little 
rooms into one big room! The bedding will be 
hung out on a piazza to air in the sun. Breakfast 
will be eaten, and then these children will come 
trooping here to school once more, fresh and 
bright, and ready to attack with a will the 
hardest lesson that ever was found in a Japanese 
book. 

Japan is a long way from home, and yet, you 
see, children here have just about the same kinds 


222 


REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS 


of fun and the same kinds of duties that you have 
yourself. 

When you were in Rome, with the brother and 
sister on the temple steps, you were told about an 
Italian story book called “ Cuore,” which thous- 
ands and thousands of Italian boys and girls read 
over and over. In that story somebody says to 
the schoolboy, Enrico: — 

" Think of the innumerable boys who are going 
to school in all countries — going through the lanes 
of quiet villages; through the streets of noisy 
towns ; along the shores of rivers and lakes ; 
through valleys and over hills; across forests and 
torrents, over the solitary paths of mountains ; 
alone, in couples, in groups, in long files, all with 
their books under their arms, clad in a thousand 
ways, speaking a thousand tongues, — millions and 
millions, all going to learn the same things in a 
hundred varied forms. 

“ Imagine this vast, vast throng of boys of a 
hundred races, this immense movement of which 
you form a part, and think: — if this movement 
were to cease, humanity would fall back into bar- 
barism. This movement is the progress, the hope, 
the glory of the world. Courage, then, little 
soldier of the immense army. Your books are 
your weapons, your class is your squadron, the 
field of battle is the whole earth. 

“ Be a brave soldier ! ” 


ANNOUNCEMENT 


Other Journeys Through the Stereoscope 

THE UNDERWOOD TRAVEL SYSTEM 

The Underwood Travel System is a plan by which journeys may be made 
through a given country, taking a certain number of positions in particularly de- 
sirable places, and looking from those positions in certain special directions, using 
stereographs to get the outlook that is desirable in each case. 

Complete equipment for such a journey consists of Underwood patent maps, 
stereographs, stereoscopes and guidebooks. 

The Underwood maps, patented in the United States and in Europe, are differ- 
ent from <common maps. Besides giving all that ordinary maps give, they 
mark plainly in red ink exactly the points where the traveler is to stand. They 
also show, by means of red lines extending in V shape from the standpoints, in 
just what direction a person is to face, just how far he can see along a street, across 
a town, or over a stretch of open country, and just what is included in the field of 
vision, or the space over which he looks. 

The guidebooks tell the traveler about the places and people and things that 
he sees, wherever he may be. 

Some of the journeys already arranged according to this system are short; 
some are long; some are in America; some are in Europe; some are in Asia; some 
are in Africa. Some of the best are : — 

The United States: — 100 positions, with guidebook and four maps. 

Washington, D. C.: — 42 positions, with guidebook and four maps. 

Niagara Falls: — 18 positions, with guidebook and two maps. 

The Grand Canon of Arizona : — 18 positions, with guidebook and two 
maps. 

Yosemite Valley : — 24 positions, with guidebook and one map. 

Yellowstone Park : — 30 positions, with guidebook and one map. 

Italy : — 100 positions, with guidebook and ten maps. 

Rome, (apart of the Italian journey) : — 46 positions, with guidebook and 
five maps. 

Switzerland : — xoo positions, with guidebook and eleven maps. 

Lake Lucerne, (a part of the Swiss journey): — n positions, with guide- 
book and three maps. 

The Bernese Alps, (a part of the Swiss journey) : — 27 positions, with 
guidebook and three maps. 

The Engadine Valley, ( a part of the Swiss journey) : — 8 positions, with 
guidebook and four maps. 

Zermatt and the Matterhorn, (a part of the Swiss journey): — 15 
positions, with guidebook and two maps. 

Climbing Mont Blanc, (a part of the Swiss journey) : — 23 positions, 
with guidebook and two maps. 

Russia : — 100 positions, with guidebook and ten maps. 

St. Petersburg, (a part of the Russian journey): — 39 positions, with guide- 
book and five maps. 

Moscow, (a part of the Russian journey) : — 27 positions, with guidebook 
and three maps. 

Palestine : — 100 positions, with guidebook and seven maps. 

Jerusalem, (a part of the Palestine journey): — 27 positions, with guide- 
book and one map. 

China : — 100 positions, with guidebook and eight maps. 

Hongkong and Canton, (a part of the Chinese journey) : — 15 positions, 
with guidebook and three maps. 

Pekin, (a part of the Chinese journey) : — 32 positions, with guidebook 
and two maps. 

Egypt : — 100 positions, with guidebook and twenty maps. 

Write for information about these and many other journeys in different parts of 
the world, addressing the nearest office of 

UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD 

3 and s West 19th Street, corner Fifth Ave., New York 

Main and 3d Sts., Ottawa, Kansas Phelan Building, San Francisco 

62 Adelaide St. East, Toronto, Canada 3 HeddonSt., Regent St., London, England 

61 Hornby Road, Bombay, India 











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